Icelandic-Chinese jazz-pop sensation Laufey is ready to show the world a side of herself that fans haven’t yet seen. Known for her soft-spoken persona and whimsical, vintage-inspired aesthetic, the Grammy-winning artist is pushing boundaries with her third studio album, A Matter of Time, released on August 22.
“The world has come to know me as this fairly soft-spoken, buttoned-up girl that dances down the street with ribbons in her hair, and I totally am that,” the 26-year-old tells “But I also can be angry and anxious as well.”
The 14-track album, which Laufey describes as her “most daring project,” threads her signature dreamy and coquettish sound with a deeper current of vulnerability and angst. Inspired by the emotional turbulence of falling in love, A Matter of Time explores both self-discovery and the messy contradictions that come with it.
“I have so many complex emotions within me. I’m just really good at hiding them,” she explains. “I think with this album, I just want to let them out a little bit. I wanted to show the world the rest of me.”
Billed as “the overthinker’s guide to love,” the record captures both the euphoria and unease of intimacy. One track in particular, “Sabotage,” crystallizes this duality. The song blends melodic piano with jarring sonic disturbances, mirroring the gap between Laufey’s polished exterior and her inner anxieties.
“The very beautiful melodic piano piece, part of ‘Sabotage,’ that’s how I appear on the outside,” she says. “But on the inside, there might be an absolute mess. That noise in ‘Sabotage,’ those disturbances, that was my musical way of displaying anxiety.”
Laufey’s genre-defying sound stems from her eclectic musical background. A former classical cello prodigy, she went on to study jazz at Berklee College of Music before breaking into pop songwriting. But despite the constant attempts to categorize her, she resists any single label.
“I’ve never been able to be put into a box my whole life. I’m not fully Icelandic, I’m not fully Chinese, I’m not American, I’m not even an individual. I’m an identical twin,” she says, referencing her sister Junia Lin, who directed the music video for “Snow White,” one of the album’s singles.
For Laufey, her identity is a composite: jazz singer, pop star, songwriter, and social media phenomenon. “Nobody really knows who I am fully except for myself,” she adds.
Laufey’s rise to fame has been meteoric. She first gained recognition through TikTok, where she shared renditions of jazz standards and snippets of her original music. Today, she commands a following of more than 8.7 million on the platform, a digital presence that helped propel her to mainstream recognition.
Her sophomore album, Bewitched, earned her a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 2024, cementing her status as one of the most exciting new voices in contemporary music.
Yet, despite the opportunities it has afforded her, Laufey admits that social media remains a double-edged sword. “It’s a funny balance because I want to be aware of what’s happening, and I need to be aware of what’s happening. I want to know what my fans are interested in,” she says. “But I just try my best to ignore it” when online commentary becomes overwhelming.
She notes how even short teasers of unreleased music are subject to scrutiny. “When I think about my favorite artists, whether they were visual artists or composers or singers from the past, they weren’t getting a full review of their music or their album based off of a teaser,” she says. “It’s actually quite important for me to tune out the noise to be able to reach my full artistic ability.”
With A Matter of Time, Laufey cements her reputation as a fearless, genre-bending artist willing to blur the line between vulnerability and performance. By daring to reveal her inner turmoil, she hopes listeners can see beyond the ribbon-clad, vintage-inspired image that first captured attention.
“This album is me letting the world into the parts of myself that I usually hide,” Laufey says. “I think it’s the most honest I’ve ever been.”