Q&A: SIKADE Continues to Teleport Listeners with “greedy heart”
WRITTEN BY ANTHONY RATCHKOV
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Photo by Kristina Fadeeva
Even the simplest things can be used to tell a profound story. While Oslo-based artist SIKADE’s sound appears to be otherworldly on the surface, it is very human and intricate at its core. It’s why the most everyday objects and most everyday actions have a place in her creative process.
There’s currently a trend of social media videos where a hit song of the previous decade will be playing and then the caption is something along the lines of “2016: I felt this song. 2026: I understood this song”. It highlights the fact that some stories can appear to be fantastical and light-hearted at first, but then, on second glance, prove to have profound meaning. With the exception that it’s not a 10-year gap, the same concept can be applied to SIKADE’s music. It is intensely felt first, then deeply understood after.
Her new single “greedy heart” is the perfect example of this. The atmosphere sweeps you away without you even thinking about it. However, SIKADE knows the words she sings in her gentle, glistening vocals carry meaning with layers waiting to be peeled back.
Life on Jupiter had the pleasure of sitting down with SIKADE to talk about “greedy heart,” field recordings, and everything in between. Read the full discussion below.
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LIFE ON JUPITER: Could you first start by telling us the story about how “greedy heart” came to be?
SIKADE: The image in the song, I wish I loved to ride a bike, it’s literally that I don’t like riding a bike, but I think it’s one of those things that sounds so romantic. I guess there are a lot of things that sound very romantic and very nice, but then I don’t really have the motivation to do them.
There’s a moment in the song where your vocals sound like they are coming from a small, old speaker. What is the idea behind that?
SIKADE: That’s a sound that I really enjoy using. I use it live, too. When I do it live, I sing through an actual telephone. It’s a real telephone, so it has this lo-fi sound.
How did you make the decision to use the harp over the guitar for a melody, or vice versa?
SIKADE: I can’t play the guitar myself, so I only play the harp. It was my motivation for starting to play the harp. I played piano when I was a child, and I went to piano lessons. Then I thought it was really hard to play guitar and decided that a harp should be easier because it’s like the same system as a piano, so I ordered one online when I was 15 years old. It turns out that the harp is pretty hard too!
You get very creative with your instrumentation. What has been the strangest, most memorable texture you’ve put into a song?
SIKADE: I make a lot of field recordings. In one of my songs, there’s a weird glitch sound that I recorded from an induction stovetop in an Airbnb when I was in Bilbao. It’s really subtle, so I don’t think you can find it, but it's part of the texture. The small textures make it like a whole new world.
Your cover art pieces are all in the same style. Do you sometimes start your creative process by looking at extras of those that you have and think, what would this sound like?
SIKADE: They usually come after the song, and then I have a bit of an idea with the colors, especially. I usually know which colors are right for the song. I usually make 10 different versions and choose one of them.
Your music video for “bloody moon” is absolutely stunning. Could you explain the story it tells and the way it relates to that song?
SIKADE: We wanted to have a different story in the video than the song itself. So they are a little bit separate, but the common story is someone finding themselves inside a supernatural moment. In the song, the moment is someone meeting their future daughter, and they sort of know they cannot exist in the same timeline. In the video, the character that I’m playing is following this mythical creature through the forest. There is a suspension of time and space in both stories.
What can your fans expect from you next?
SIKADE: I’m working on an album. It’s pretty close to being finished, but I’m mixing it myself so it takes a while to sort of just decide that it’s done. I’m hoping to release it this autumn.