Lykke Li might not be quite as idiosyncratic as fellow Scandinavian songstresses Bjork or Hanne Hukkelberg, but she sure know how to write brave, brilliant, and strikingly otherworldly music. Her new album Wounded Rhymes, the follow up to 2008's Youth Novels, was conceived, written and recorded in the desert hills of Los Angeles on what Li has referred to as a retreat, to escape the "cold and dark" winter of her native Sweden.Despite the setting though she admits it is an album of dark themes, even "psychotic" at times when dealing with the break up of a recent relationship. Much like Youth Novels it is heartbreak and despair that seem to fuel this record, yet Li manages to turn those bleak emotions into the most beautiful compositions.
