Oslo, Norway's Sassy 009 makes abstract electro-pop that edges toward house, techno, and industrial, mixing dreamy synth textures with distorted, propulsive beats. Once a trio, Sassy 009 became the solo project of founder Sunniva Lindgaard in 2019, when second EP Kill Sassy 009 was released. Further releases like 2021's Heart Ego flirted with drum'n'bass and synthwave.

The daughter of classically trained musicians, Lindgaard picked Sassy 009 as a SoundCloud username before she started making music herself. She formed Sassy 009 in early 2017 with former classmate Teodora Geoegijevic and mutual friend Johanna Orellana, and the trio started making left-field dance-pop songs filled with layered vocals and lush flute arrangements. Debut EP Do You Mind was released by Luft Recordings at the end of the year. Sassy 009 unexpectedly slimmed down to just Lindgård in 2019. She recorded Kill Sassy 009 at Luft Studios with the help of co-producer BAYA (Andrew Murray), and the EP was issued that November. Sassy 009 also collaborated with Clairo on the single "Lara," a tune about a crush on iconic video game character Lara Croft. Several singles, including "Blue Racecar" and "Mystery Boy," led up to the release of the 2021 mixtape Heart Ego.

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Sassy 009

Luft and Boden Studio wins Visuelt-award for 'Heart Ego'-campaign

Sassy 009 releases mixtape 'Heart Ego'

Sassy 009 teams up with Spotify for their new playlist 'Oyster'

DAZED, 'On The Rise': The rebirth of electronic artist SASSY 009

i-D Magazine: 10 things you need to know about sassy 009 

Pitchfork: Sassy 009’s “Are You Leaving” Is Excellent Experimental Pop

Pitchfork: Hear SASSY 009’s Trance Love Song “Pretty Baby”

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 is the most ambitious project I’ve done so far in my career, yet the project I have had the most trouble defining. Framing it as a mixtape was like finding home. The actual structuring and understanding of my compositions is simply a result of how I think it should feel, and not necessarily in line with a structure someone else completely understands.”

, explains Sunniva Lindgård aka Sassy 009 on her mixtape.

The bulk of the release was written throughout the winter of 2019 into 2020 in Lindgård’s mum’s apartment, before being re-recorded and produced in 

, discarding a lot of the original ideas and whittling it down to the hazy-yet-taut pop that remains.

“Ultimately with this I want to prove that I am a better musician today than yesterday” 

. “And feel that the risk of spending tremendous amounts of hours in my bedroom was worth it. I think that’s the biggest concern, more than a statement, that my time has been spent well.”

Listening to Heart Ego it’s hard to deny that it hasn’t. Sassy 009 remains a singular project, a hyper-pop project that feels like its hurtling through space, a balance of acceleration and phantasmagoria, of physicality and weightlessness.

Heart Ego

Forever Seventeen

Blue Racecar

Mystery Boy

Here Comes The Weekend

Red Plum

Wannabe

It's Complicated

Ego Heart Ego

The glitched new outing Red Plum plays on minimalism, relying on a handful of surging currents to bounce around the cavernous space before the atmosphere is cut through with squalling guitar. Speaking on her new track, Sassy 009 shares: “Red Plum represents the uncompromising, unfiltered headspace that, although I don’t show it myself, it is felt deeply on the inside. The idea came out of frustration over being trapped in-between the need of knowing what goes on in everyone’s lives through my phone, and the unpleasant feeling of observing someone who deals with their pain very publicly.”

Those who’ve followed the path of Oslo-based Sassy 009 and the constantly fluid, blurred edges of her hallucinogenic pop, will know that she’s an artist that follows emotion and mood, over strict narrative and composition.

Maybe something like: Through 2019s EP KILL Sassy 009 and subsequent tracks, including a collaboration with Clairo, Lingård’s pushed the project through re-imagined techno, breathy Scandi-pop and hyper R&B in a way that suggests an artist as excited as the listener to hear what might come next – as if each track acts as its own sandbox within which Lingård's allowed to play in.

The accompanying video finally gives an insight to Sassy 009's other passion: hitting the slopes with her badass all-female skate/snowboard crew 

. The footage follows Suni and her pals performing their favourite winter hobby and majestically gliding through the mountain tops of Norway.

Today, SASSY 009 shares her new track ‘Here Comes The Weekend’ on Luft Recordings. The pulsating Billie Eilish-meets-sunrise-in-Berghain outing sees the Oslo-based musician enter a new realm of the dance-floor as she sends tremors through it’s ceilings with her captivating vocals, crystallised synths and razor-sharp drums.

Speaking on the track, SASSY 009 personally observes the darker side of a hedonistic lifestyle: 

“When I started making this song, I envisioned myself sitting in a dark little apartment on a red leather couch staring into the smoke of a joint laying on the table. It led me into thinking of how complex the process of escaping a "sober" reality really is, and how I’ve willingly put myself in situations where self-control is on puzzling terms. ‘Here Comes The Weekend’ is all about that existentially risky moment of self realisation when things have already gone too far.”

The track follows her much-loved return with the “captivating new pop number” (DIY) 

 and the introduction into her new innovative adventure 

 with the retro Blue Racecar game. ‘Here Comes The Weekend’ unlocks the next SASSY009.WORLD component ‘Sassychat’, which gives fans and the audience a chance to chat all sorts directly to Sunni

SASSY 009 (aka Sunniva Lindgård) returns with new single 'Blue Racecar' - out today on Luft Recordings. 'Blue Racecar' tells a story about an injured angel transitioning from one chapter to another, something SASSY 009 has always embraced as a musician. “The time has come for a change, whatever it may be - let it come.” as she explains.

Hear the new track through the revved up Blue Racecar game via 

 - an interdisciplinary oasis where music, film, graphic design and web design and development meet. In collaboration with Boden Studio, SASSY 009 has created a digital, interactive audiovisual universe that her fans will help to bring alive. The aim is to redefine the listening experience and challenge the traditional digital presence for an artist and audience.

“There are so many ways of ‘expressing music’ if you dare to push boundaries. Overwhelmingly, Boden beautifully helped to tie the entire journey together from start to finish. SO MUCH FUN, even at times where we were all scratching our heads.” shares SASSY 009 on it’s creation.

If Oslo-based Sunniva Lindgåard aka Sassy 009's last musical output 'KILL Sassy 009' - that led to celebratory press from the likes of Dazed, i-D, Vogue, Fader and more - was the 23 year old finding her feet as a producer and solo artist, then her new single Ghost Town confidently announces her arrival as a force to be reckoned with.

She's been enlisted by Spotify's new Oyster playlist, where they handpick the best emerging talents from the Nordic region (girl in red did the last), allowing them to release new music that reflects who they are. Recorded in lockdown, Sunni soundtracks the deserted dim lit streets of Oslo, through a potent acid bassline backed by skittering runaway breakbeats, with an ultra-hyper arena-sized hook that will no doubt be pumping through every street corner once things are back to normality.

"I see the sounds and musical universes I create in pictures."

"Ghost Town is illustrated in my head as a walk in the street at night, with moonlight shining a light on everything I see. I’m walking past abandoned cafés and places people used to hang around, feeling the cold rain hitting my skin, drop after drop. everything has changed. and I somehow feel left by myself, as if I was the last person standing on earth."

Ghost Town

Ghost Town - Spotify Studio Oyster Recording

…and yes, it’s an homage to Microsoft era Lara Croft. This crisp and catchy crossover tune offers the best of pop, indie and electronic music in one dreamy power package. A result of coincidences, the internet and great pop sensibility, “Lara” came about in 2018 when SASSY 009 happened to be 

close by to Clairo’s whereabouts in North America, and the energy of mutual admiration led the two artists together. The tune shows a new side of Sunniva Lindgård aka SASSY 009’s productions, with it’s soft synths and underwater world soundscapes. It’s still very much SASSY 009 however, showcased through the heavily distorted drums and leftfield breaks. In parallel, Clairo’s great sense of storytelling and melody shines through as strong as ever, with a vocal hook that will stick with you entering this next decade...

Lara (ft. Clairo)

Lara (feat. Clairo)

“I believe setting goals is overrated,” says Sassy 009’s Sunniva Lindgaard. “Life unfolds in a much greater extent on its own terms.”

It’s a statement that is both simultaneously emblematic and at odds with Sassy 009’s latest release. On one hand, the hotly tipped trio is now a solo project - something no amount of planning could likely foresee - but on the other, the end result feels completely right to continue as an autonomous pursuit. “I must say working by myself feels very natural” she admits.

KILL SASSY 009

Okay

Fake News (Interlude)

Thrasher

Maybe in the Summer

Second Thought (Interlude)

Are You Still a Lover

Til (*****)

 ‘Are You Still a Lover’ explores the sensitive and more organic aspects of SASSY’s music, who grew up listening to the likes of Joy Division, even introducing electric guitar and bass guitar for the first time in a production. The result is an intimate post-punk inspired pop tune that, despite its fragile nature, has the drive and power stance to lock in listeners with its hypnotic momentum.

"On the SoundCloud page for 'Maybe In The Summer', a song from SASSY 09's new EP, two of the three posted comments are about its snare drum. It arrives after two minutes, and it's the kind of thing that DJ Stingray eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 'Maybe In The Summer' like much of SASSY 009's new EP, is essentially electro pop, but its snare is one of many examples of surprising production moments that align the record with adventurous dance music. 'Thrasher' has an even more striking instance of this. There's again an electro beat and an inviting vocal performance at its core, but this time things slip out of control when the beat is rushed by a massive, barking bassline and SASSY 09's vocal flips to a distorted yell. 

In fact, subtle distortion in various forms is an ongoing theme in 

, the first EP since Sunniva Lindgård took on the project, formerly a trio, by herself. We aren't a million miles away from an artist like Robyn, but the use of distortion is perhaps symbolic of the spiky sound Lindgård seems to want to cultivate. "Okay," the opener, wafts along gently with no indication that the arrangement will be squeezed to a dramatic crescendo. "MK3" is a less convincing example of the template, but the mellower pair of tracks that follow, closing this eight-track EP, are both strong and a little different. The post-punk-style bassline on "Are You Still a Lover" works especially nicely next to the fried drums and Lindgård's bruised voice, while "Til (*****)" also benefits from a standout bassline, this time a bouncing square wave. If electro pop with some bite and an ear for production sounds appealing, give this one a go."

It’s a statement that is both simultaneously emblematic and at odds with Sassy 009’s latest release. On one hand, the hotly tipped trio is now a solo project - something no amount of planning could likely foresee - but on the other, the end result feels completely right to continue as an autonomous pursuit. “I must say working by myself feels very natural,” she admits.

The songs evolving into new, previously unexplored terrain also fits in with what was running through Lindgaard’s head at the time. “I had quite an intense period of fascination for the universe and existential thoughts, as well as being very much into spaceship aesthetics.” The music reflects this deeply textured, thoughtful, otherworldly and almost sci-fi-esque tone. “I have a thing for things I don't understand, like time and space.” It was being introduced to the Roland Juno 106 and Oberheim-OB6 synths that led to the sound of the record taking shape and honing in on its aesthetic narrative. “My vision was to create my own spaceship. That's sort of the picture I have in my head when I think of my EP. Plus, my co-producer Baya’s studio sort of feels like a spaceship itself, which made the whole working and recording environment inspiring and easy going.”

 is a trio of Oslo musicians and childhood friends—Teodora, Sunniva and Johanna (with no surnames that we know of)—who started making music together in school. They don’t explicitly say what roles they play in the group, like who’s the vocalist, or the producer, or who plays that insane flute solo on their fantastic new song, “Are You Leaving.” This unadorned backstory affords the group a refreshing air of simplicity and a touch of mystery: They don’t list influences or inspirations, and the previously released song in their scant discography, the icy techno-pop track “

,” was very different from the head-spinning bop of their newest offering. The second track from their upcoming EP, 

, is not just a hint at the dizzying range this trio possesses, but it’s a hands-in-the-air jam that will leave you riding high on an endorphin rush by the time it’s done.

Sassy 009

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