Hometown: Stockholm.
The lineup: Johen Rafael Tilli (piano, production) and Mayka Edd (vocals, lyrics).
The background: When it comes to pop music, the primary school-age sector is an underserved demographic. In the 70s, a lot of the glam acts – Sweet, Slade, Suzi Quatro – seemed to tailor their singles specifically to the demands of break-time, with their high stomp factor and chant quotient: Blockbuster, Cum on Feel the Noize, Can the Can. But today, the eight-year-old or younger is often overlooked by marketing types and musicians. Not by Death Team though, a Swedish duo whose insidious hip-hop-pop is aimed squarely at the playground, more for the cadences and catchiness than anything else.
“Children love them,” says Mayka Edd, the frontwoman whose sing-song tone telegraphs her snarky smartness, and the one “responsible” (term used advisedly) for Death Team’s lyrics. She points out that the Swedish media has a relaxed attitude towards colourful language, hence Death Team’s ubiquity on Swedish daytime radio and increasing familiarity among children. “I’ve heard a lot of stories from parents where their four-year-old daughters are singing, ‘I’m the kind of person you don’t wanna fuck with!’ In Sweden you can play everything.”
To be fair, not every Death Team song features F-bombs, but they are all madly memorable almost to the point of mania. They have the nagging infectiousness of the best novelty pop (or worst, depending on your view), with Mayka’s breathy high-on-helium voice contrasting disconcertingly with the sometimes base messages (they’ve just written a song called Murder). They had described themselves as “Abba meets Eminem”, Mayka claiming that the music of the Swedish super-popsters “is in our DNA”, but their newest material is heavier, more metallic, leading her to suggest they are becoming more “System of a Down meets t.A.T.u.”. You could come up with any number of alternatives for their cartoon clash of rap and pop, the cutting and cute: Death Grips meets Daphne & Celeste, anyone? How about Tyler, the Creator meets Taylor Swift? Mayka and her Death Team partner Johen Rafael Tilli both love the Odd Future leader and once stalked him at an airport in Finland until they got a selfie. And they have a song called Shake It Off (about the importance of “not giving a shit”) that they swear they wrote before they heard the Taylor Swift one.
Charli XCX is a big fan of the duo, and regularly plays their tracks on the Candy Shop, her Beats 1 show. “She thinks we have a cool thing going on and loves our 90s references,” says Mayka.
Their current single, Messed Up, has a trap beat, trap synths, trap, well, everything, while its accompanying video was influenced by Stranger Things – “our latest inspiration” (along with trap). As for “Death Team”, they chose the name because it sounded like a metal band, and because they had a song “about a badass cheerleading squad, so we took the name for ourselves”.
They formed the band two years ago when strategic thinker Johen was a struggling movie animator and Mayka was working as a DJ. At first, they were a sort of “fantasy punk band”, before mutating into what they do now, which is not, Mayka would like to stress, comedy rap-pop, even if they do have a song called Dolphin Style in which she compares herself to the titular mammal.
“We don’t want to get stuck in some crazy party band idea,” she says. “We love having fun but we want to do more serious music, too. We want to be a good band who can move people and create songs that people love.”
Spin magazine voted Fucking Bitches in the Hood the ninth best song of last year, writing: “It’s the most perfectly WTF rap verse of 2015.” And it has been streamed 2.5m times on Spotify. Dolphin Style puts Katherine Hamnett-style slogans (“Ghetto life / Get a life”) in a kindie-pop context. So Fresh finds them “Cruisin’ like a soda pop / Top down, super hot”, while Gold simultaneously critiques and celebrates conspicuous rap consumption (“And my RayBans made of gold / All my fans made of gold / My Versace made of gold”) with a descending keyboard motif that sounds like a 90s house piano falling downstairs. With its repetitive banjo riff and “We are the kids and we don’t want our medicine” chorus, Kids could be a Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex-style fluke smash. So could Feel Like Dancing, notwithstanding its “You should dance the pain away” refrain, recalling noughties Danish hitmakers Junior Senior.
Hyperactive? Jump sounds like Ting Tings after necking several tubes of Smarties. They’ve also got a tune called We Don’t Care If You Have Fun, but clearly they do. They judiciously balance the sublime and ridiculous with their bubblegum take on PC pop. We’re a little concerned about Mayka’s determination to “go serious” – she starts talking at one point about Lykke Li – but hopefully they won’t be waylaid by such adult concerns. Like their glam forebears, they give boneheaded banality a good name.
The buzz: “Your soon-to-be-favourite Swedish electropop act” – Idolator.
The truth: If Chinn & Chapman invented a 90s-obsessed Swedish pop-rap duo …
Most likely to: Can the Can.
Least likely to: Eat tuna.
What to buy: Messed Up is out now.
File next to: Daphne & Celeste, Oh My!, Shampoo, Lele[SPEAKS].
Ones to watch: Bibi Bourelly, Adam Naas, Rebecca & Fiona, Katie Gately, Bryde.
