Aurora with Foreign Air

After hearing her lithe, fairytale-reminiscent songs, perhaps it wouldn’t surprise you to learn thatAURORA (born Aurora Aksnes) hails from a Norwegian city with a name translates to “Fjord of Lights.” Or that when she was six, the future singer/songwriter was disciplined for convincing classmates that their school was overrun with talking mice. Or even that her first brush with making music was discovering a toy piano, and she managed to keep her hobby a secret from her parents until well into her teen years.Now nineteen and on the cusp of releasing her debut full-length, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, AURORA’s fantasies have only grown, inhabiting every corner of her music. A girl makes peace with her murderer and the inherit vulnerability of life in the haunting piano ballad “Murder Song (5,4,3,2,1).” A runaway fades away into the wonder of nature over the course of “Runaway,” her escape marked with harpsichord, live percussion, and an undeniable sense of wonder. And coupled with an anthemic swell of synths and AURORA’s triumphant vocal, “Running With the Wolves” makes tapping into one’s lupine side seem not only plausible but downright irresistible.“When I was very young, younger than now, I could listen to songs by Cohen and Bob Dylan, not even knowing the English language yet, and still kind of understand what the song was about, and have a sense of emotion from the song without knowing the words,” AURORA reveals. “I always strive to be better and I always feel like everything I’m making can be better if I had more time. I’m very picky. But the most important thing is the emotion in the song, of course. So I hope that the emotions in my songs are clear enough that you don’t need to know what the words mean.”