After fifteen years of performing and writing music together, the Danish five-piece Lowly are back to where they started. Five musicians, playing in a room together, figuring out the most exciting way to channel their deepest emotions into song. The band don’t seem to have a leader per se—even as they answer questions, they hesitate a bit, giving space to let each other speak their minds. They clearly operate as a unit, a collective, and it’s what makes their music so special. Each member brings their separate talent, and the result is more than the sum of its parts.

That’s how they started when they were at conservatory in the town of Aarhus—vocalists Nanna Schannong and Soffie Viemose, keyboardist Kasper Staub, bassist Thomas Lund, and drummer Steffen Lundtoft had all admired each other from afar, fans of each other’s various projects, but looking for something more. They joined forces and quickly began to craft what would become their signature sound: a potent mélange of indie, shoegaze, dreampop, and alt rock, with each member meticulously contributing their individual vision to something that equals much more than the sum of its parts. 

“We definitely felt a strong connecting energy between us,” says Steffen about their first meetings. “Even though we started as a school project, we really quickly found out that we had something special. We wrote our first song the first couple of hours after we met. We had all agreed that it would just be a side project, but soon it became the main place for all of us to write music and channel emotions.”

It went so fast, in fact, that The Guardian and The Line of Best Fit picked up that very first track the band recorded together, a scintillating slice of angelic indie pop called “Daydreamers”—a chance opportunity setting them on a trajectory that would eventually land them at Bella Union, when labelhead Simon Raymonde heard one of their subsequent BBC Radio 6 sessions. Legendary producer Brian Eno even became a fan, name-dropping them in interviews. “We just had big ambitions,” says Kasper. “We were really excited and I think we wanted it. The Guardian and the BBC just made us kind of hungry for that success.” 

Three full-length albums followed: Heba in 2017, Hifalutin in 2019, and Keep Up the Good Work in 2023. Each record has their own flavor, a variation on a theme: always the core dynamic of the group at the center, socially exploring their relationship, finding the perfect balance between individuality and the collective.

“Heba was very much the energy of meeting in a room and quickly arranging songs that had already been sketched out,” continues Steffen. “Hifalutin was more produced, more put-together from different fragments. Now, I feel like we've gone into that process again of just being in a room together, not looking at a computer screen. Like, ‘Here's a song, let's play it maybe two or three times and then record it,’ so that it really has a strong connection with some of the early Lowly stuff.”

This is how Lowly went about recording their new album, the expansive, emotional, and heart-touching Softy. Across 10 sprawling tracks, the band tell a tale of modern life, weaving together stories of raising children, searching for togetherness, and finding courage in the face of an increasingly unstable world.

“On our last album, we worked with our producer, Anders Boll,” says Soffie. “He was the anchor, and we were working with him in turns. For a lot of the production the band members weren’t in the studio at the same time—I'm happy with the album, but it was sometimes kind of a detached experience.. This time we just really wanted to be in a room together and play the music. We rented a house and recorded some songs, and we also recorded in the studio in Aarhus, so the experience was very focused on actually being together—which meant less fidgeting with sound, but much more human interaction.”

For the first time in their career, Lowly have decided to self-produce their album, a choice that brought them even closer to fully realizing their impact, both on fans of their music and on each other as musicians. “There was a big question of, ‘How do we produce an album ourselves?’ Because we are five people. So we really made some agreements like, not to work on the record in between sessions. The recording process was much shorter than usual.”

A track that captures this ethos perfectly is lead single “Liminal Space”, a song built around a mournful guitar melody that contemplates on what it’s like to hold a child’s future in your hands. The track pulses wave after wave to twinkling texture, floating the listener across a placid landscape while never straying from its emotional core.

“The lyrics speak to all of us collectively, about experiencing the realization that your child is at the age you were when you started remembering stuff,” says Kasper. “I sent a little voice memo to Soffie with the piano motif, with some space in between to make a vocal response to that melody.” “I remember wanting it to sound like Elton John,” laughs Soffie, “Like really banging out chords in the chorus. The lyrics are about being a parent and realizing you have to actually do something to not pass on the stuff on that you were given as a kid. To create brave little kids, you also have to be a role model.”

Keep in mind—this isn’t a nostalgia trip, and there’s nothing retro about Softy’s sound. On the contrary, Lowly are looking towards the future, not the past; as all five members experience parenthood in their own lives, the concepts around their music have taken an existential turn, asking bigger questions than they ever have before. A continuous theme on the album is bravery, harnessing the ability to look life in the face and manage to come out on top. “The album is about bravery in terms of the micro scale of family, and the macro scale of finding courage to move through life in general,” says Kasper.

“When the world is going so crazy, bravery is more relevant than ever,” says Steffen. “Maybe that's why we’re channeling these feelings on this particular album, because right now is the craziest time in all of our lives. We talked a lot about, what do we want to do? Why do we want to be a band under these circumstances? And if we're going to be a band, then we should do it in a really, really caring and sustainable way. Let’s take responsibility for the process, and also be brave enough to put out an album that's not overproduced.”

The album opener “Brave” takes a deep dive on these topics, a piano ballad periodically swept away by rolling drums and undulating walls of synthesizers. “Am I useless if they call me?/How can I protect my family?” sings Soffie. “What good is my singing to a woman, man, trans, daughter or a son?” It sets Softy off on a powerful note, providing the listener with firsthand insight on why Lowly have chosen this record to get back to their basics. 

Another focus track, the album’s namesake “Softy”, sees Nanna’s lyrics excavate her own anxieties. “It's not directly a song about having kids and growing up, but about the deeper feelings somehow, the love and the frustration,” she says. Steffen’s drumming propels the track, lending an upbeat mood to what could have been a straightforward ballad. “Especially with “Softy”, and many of Nanna’s lyrics, it can be like imagery flashing before your eyes,” says Soffie. “You may not know specifically what it's about, but you have a sense of something that you've been put through.”

Elsewhere on the album, “What Is It For” clocks in at just over two minutes, but might be Softy’s most sprightly moment. The band light up when talking about it, as if it expertly encapsulates everything they love about making music together. “Something that's a bit odd and fun is when I send an instrumental to Nanna, often what I assume is one part of the song, she will interpret as another part,” explains Kasper. “For example, a part I thought was the middle eight is her chorus. It gives a structure that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a pop song. “What Is It For” is very catchy and melodic and straightforward, but the form and structure is unexpected.”

“It’s also very upbeat, with this light guitar riff,” adds Nanna, “but lyrically it's not very happy. I like that complexity, the idea of something having two sides.”

“You dance while you cry,” continues Soffie. “You don't know what's going on: ‘Why am I feeling like this when this song sounds so happy?’”

“So much of the music that we resonate with has that quality,” concludes Kasper. “We’re definitely striving for that.”

Even as they’re talking, Lowly have found their groove. They don’t blindly agree with each other, or gloss over each other’s words, or take each other for granted. It’s just that after all these years, they’ve settled into their own mini ecosystem, one that always leads them back to the same place: trust in the process, and trust in each other.

“Softy is a classic Lowly album in the sense that it’s put together by five very different individuals,” says Steffen, finally. “The songs are so different from each other, as are the sonic qualities. The songwriting is different. Soffie, Kasper and Nanna all write very different lyrics, but this is Lowly at its core. A collection of elements working together, emphasizing each others’ strengths . All our work contains different types of songs, but they’re bound together by the fact that it’s us making it together. So there's room for everyone.”