Swedish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emil Svanängen makes records and plays sows under the enigmatic name of Loney Dear. 

In the early 2000s, in his Stockholm apartment studio, Svanängen made a name for himself by creating homemade CDrs with a minidisk microphone and a home computer, self-releasing albums which by 2007 had picked Sub Pop’s ears and they released 'Loney, Noir'. Two more albums – 'Dear John' and 'Hall Music'- followed, as did glowing reviews in The Guardian, BBC, Drowned in Sound, Pitchfork and the Line of Best Fit went as far as calling him a "brilliant genius". 

Loney Dear has consistently crafted elegant, deeply stirring music.

Multi-layered with instrumentation and Svanängen’s fragile yet irrepressible vocals, Loney Dear’s songs bloom with a sense of both intimacy and openness, at once uplifting and heartbreaking, tenacious yet tender. 

In 2017 Svanängen finds himself at something of a crossroads. His career, in many ways, has been as unique as his music. "I’ve been taking some strange roads. Basically, I have a really strange career and have no idea where it’s going. Everything is always random because my career is so small and slow. I have had to learn to enjoy all the randomness of what I’m doing."

After all these years in the music industry, Svanängen has reached a stage in which he is not striving to be loved, to be big, to be recognized or feels that he is deserving of more than he has. Above all, he feels emboldened and powerful simply by the new music he is making, as featured on his latest album. “I’m moving into a bolder state, I’m confident, powerful, I became a singer, I learned my darkness and discovered my magnetism”. 

On his seventh album, and first for Peter Gabriel's Real World, 'Loney Dear', Loney Dear has undergone something of a rebirth, and a profound artistic awakening. He sees this collection of songs as the beginning of something very new and very potent.