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Meet the ice queen of folk-rock. By Miranda Thompson

WHO? Singer Eivør brings her Faroese ‘folk-tronica’ – a blend of traditional Faroe music with underground rock – to the UK. WHAT’S THE STORY? The 33-year-old Faroe Island native, who grew up in a ‘tiny village’ on one of the 18 islands between Iceland and Norway, knew she wanted to be a singer from a young age. She got her first guitar at 11 – ‘My mum gave me hers and taught me a few chords’ – before launching herself on the local music scene, playing with ‘little garage bands’ and recording the first of her two albums on the island at 16. At 17 she moved to Reykjavik to study classical singing, where ‘I recorded two more albums – I met a lot of musicians’, before relocating to Copenhagen. MYTHS AND LEGENDS Eivør credits her rural Faroese upbringing as the force behind her music. ‘I’m inspired by fairy folk music and stories and myths from the area,’ she says. It’s certainly evocative – her guttural singing caught the ear of Downton Abbey composer John Lunn, who recruited her to work with him on the soundtrack for TV show The Last Kingdom. ‘I was going to sing on one track but we worked so well together that I ended up collaborating with him on the whole series.’ BIG BRITISH BREAK Eivør’s English reworking of recent Faroese language album Slør. ‘It sounded really cool in English, so I wanted to see if it would work.’ A recent sold-out London show (and summer tours across Europe) would indicate that it certainly does.

Eivør’s album Slør (English version) is out now on A&G Records. For tickets to her UK tour from 27 to 29 November, visit eivor.com