AURORA

Born on June 15, 1996 in Stavanger, Norway, avant-pop enigma Aurora Aksnes performs and records mononymously as Aurora. After discovering her sister's electric piano in the attic of her parents' home and unlocking her love of music at an early age, she set off on her songwriting journey aged nine. She self-released her debut single "Puppet" in December 2012 under her birth name, but inaugurated her stage name in March 2014 with the release of her second single, "Awakening." Her career began to pick up the pace with 2015 EP Running with the Wolves, which later spawned a sleeper hit in lead single "Runaway," going viral on TikTok in 2021. She performed at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in 2015 and released her best-selling debut album, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend the following year, which went to Number 1 in Norway as well as cracking the Top 30 in the UK and the Billboard 200 in the US. Her second EP, the two-part Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1), arrived in 2018, with the second part ultimately comprising her second album, 2019's A Different Kind of Human (Step 2), on which she embraced themes relating to queerness, the climate emergency, and collaborated with various producers including Magnus Skylstad and Asjkell Solstrand. In 2019, she also contributed backing vocals to "Into the Unknown" from the Frozen II soundtrack and performed the song live in February 2020 as part of the 92nd Academy Awards. Her third studio album, The Gods We Can Touch, landed in January 2022 through Decca Records and Glassnote Records. June 2024 saw the release of Aurora's fourth studio album What Happened to the Heart? which was preceded by the singles "Your Blood," "The Conflict of the Mind," and "Some Type of Skin."