The Story
Aurora Aksnes was born in Stavanger, Norway, and grew up writing songs in near-secrecy before her early demos — starting with "Puppet" in 2012 — found their way online. By 2015 her cover of Oasis' "Half the World Away" was soundtracking the John Lewis Christmas advert, and "Runaway," the song she wrote at eleven, would go on to become a slow-burning global phenomenon with well over a billion streams and a fiercely devoted fanbase she calls her warriors and weirdos.
Her 2016 debut, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, established the AURORA blueprint: crystalline electro-folk built on Nordic melancholy, nature mysticism, and an unmistakable voice. She followed it with the two-part Infections of a Different Kind (Step I) and A Different Kind of Human (Step II), lent her voice to Frozen II as the call of "Into the Unknown," and scored the animated film WolfWalkers.
The Gods We Can Touch (2022) reimagined Greek mythology as glittering art-pop, while What Happened to the Heart? (2024) turned inward and outward at once — an album about apathy, empathy, and staying human in a manipulated world, which she unpacked in interviews with NME and DIY. An outspoken environmentalist, she remains one of Norway's most singular pop exports.
On stage she is a force: recent tours have carried her from London's Union Chapel to Mexico City's Corona Capital festival and a headline night at Barcelona's Palau Sant Jordi, with a return to London's Roundhouse announced for late 2026.
