Anna von Hausswolff (Anna Michaela Ebba Electra von Hausswolff; born 6 September 1986) is a Swedish singer-songwriter, musician, and composer. She is known for her gothic-styled music, usually accompanied by the pipe organ.
Born in Gothenburg, Sweden, von Hausswolff is the daughter of avant-garde sound artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff. She was a student of architecture at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg when she started making music.
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Anna von Hausswolff (Anna Michaela Ebba Electra von Hausswolff; born 6 September 1986) is a Swedish singer-songwriter, musician, and composer. She is known for her gothic-styled music, usually accompanied by the pipe organ.
Born in Gothenburg, Sweden, von Hausswolff is the daughter of avant-garde sound artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff. She was a student of architecture at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg when she started making music.
Von Hausswolff released her debut single “Track of Time” on 5 February 2010. Her debut EP of the same name had appeared that month on Kning Disk, described as avant-garde pop aimed straight at the heart. The first album Singing From the Grave followed in May 2010 and was warmly received by the Swedish press. Everyone who hears her sing tends to stop and listen. Her voice moves between tenderness and storm.
She played the Way Out West Festival in 2009. In March 2010 she opened for Tindersticks on three occasions and toured Brazil with Taken by Trees and Taxi Taxi!. In 2011 she opened for Lykke Li three times and for M. Ward at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. She has played at several major Swedish festivals including Peace and Love, Storsjöyran, Arvika and Made Festival. Hausswolff is noted for her expressive voice and commanding live presence and is sometimes compared to Diamanda Galás.
On July 9, 2013 Ceremony was released in North America by Other Music Recording Co., and she played her debut US show on July 10 at Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn. Bob Boilen praised the album, saying her voice can soar with power and still hold delicate emotion. She was featured across US media, including NPR, PRI, WNYC, the New York Times and Pitchfork.
Ceremony was followed by The Miraculous in 2015. The album draws on her fascination with the pipe organ, an instrument that once transformed European churches into spaces of mystery, magic and dread. The Miraculous was inspired by an undisclosed rural place in Sweden marked by natural beauty and the memory of a violently crushed peasant uprising. Using the 9,000-pipe Acusticum Organ, she created a sound world so immense it feels like something you need to step back from to see clearly. The cover shows her as a faceless apparition in a derelict room with worn images of Christ and angels. The atmosphere recalls Swans and Nico.
The album opens with “Discovery”, a foghorn-like blast of bass pipes and a slow-spreading organ mass that builds into tension and conflict. Two shorter tracks follow: the archaic-sounding “The Hope Only Of Empty Men” and the unsettling, ecclesiastical “Pomperipossa”. The eleven-minute “Come Wander With Me/Deliverance” is the centrepiece, shifting from sepulchral organ tones to a lumbering procession and a hammering riff. She sings of a figure emerging from sunset and sea before dissolving into cries that blur pain and ecstasy. Later tracks revisit the album’s themes: the meditative “En Ensam Vandrare”, the drum-driven “An Oath”, and “Evocation”, a dense summoning of everything before it. After a minute of static it seems to end, but the title track appears, a slow organ awakening with her voice drifting overhead. “Stranger” closes the record with a romantic plea for absolution. The album pushes into territory where post-rock, prog, doom metal, modern classical music and church music coexist.
Von Hausswolff released her fourth album Dead Magic in March 2018. Some described it as her darkest and most ambitious record. Produced with Randall Dunn and recorded on the pipe organ at Copenhagen’s Marble Church, it encourages listeners to accept mystery and ambiguity. It was preceded by the single “The Vanishing of Elektra” and the early release of “The Truth, The Glow, The Fall”.
She sang on “Born From the Serpent’s Eye” by Wolves in the Throne Room, contributed guest vocals with her sister Maria to Swans’ Leaving Meaning and appears on the Sunn O))) live album Metta, Benevolence.
Her fifth album All Thoughts Fly was released in 2020. It was recorded on the pipe organ of Örgryte New Church in Gothenburg, the largest organ tuned in quarter-comma meantone temperament worldwide.
In 2022 her music was performed at Union Chapel in London on the opening night of Organ Reframed, played by the London Contemporary Orchestra alongside works by Ipek Gorgun and Abul Mogard.
In August 2025 she announced her sixth studio album Iconoclasts together with the double single “Stardust” and “The Whole Woman”. The album was released on October 31 and received critical acclaim.
Musical style and legacy:
Her gothic-leaning music is described as art pop, drone and post-metal, with contrasts of dark and bright. The Guardian has called it funeral pop. The Miraculous is known for its gothic splendour, Dead Magic for a brighter, more accessible beat. Her vocals have been compared to Nico, Diamanda Galás, Yma Sumac, Kate Bush and Siouxsie Sioux. Her music also draws from Krautrock with nods to Einstürzende Neubauten and Swans.
The pipe organ features heavily in her work. She has described its physical demands, using hands and feet together, pulling stops to shift colours and moving the entire body when playing fast.
On 7 December 2021 she cancelled a planned concert at Notre-Dame de Bon-Port in Nantes after fundamentalist Catholic groups blocked the entrance and accused her of satanic themes. The concerts were instrumental organ performances and had been approved by the Diocese of Nantes. On 9 December a concert at Saint-Eustache in Paris was similarly threatened and moved to the Protestant Unie de l’Etoile church. Her team criticised the lack of political support. Organisers and spectators in Nantes announced intentions to file a complaint for obstruction of freedom of expression. She has denied accusations of Satanism.
On 13 December 2021 a show at Saint-Dominique in Brussels also received threats but took place under police protection. About one hundred people protested more calmly than the crowds in France.
Discography:
Studio albums:
Singing from the Grave (2010)
Ceremony (2013)
The Miraculous (2015)
Dead Magic (2018)
All Thoughts Fly (2020)
Iconoclasts (2025)
Live albums:
Live at Montreux Jazz Festival (2022)
Extended plays:
Track of Time (2010)
Källan (Prototype) (2014)
Källan (Betatype) (2016)
http://www.annavonhausswolff.com
http://www.facebook.com/annavonhausswolff
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…shrink me down again
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