It’s been a few jam-packed years for Icona Pop. The Swedish DJ/production duo, composed of longtime friends Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo, both became mothers during the 2020 pandemic—right in the middle of working on their highly-anticipated second studio album, Club Romantech. Released in September 2023, the hypnotic record is a jolt to the heart and a skipless dance mix rolled into one. Playful songs like “Spa”—a collaboration with Sofi Tukker which features the relatable chorus, “I’m done with the club/ Just take me to the spa”—are woven in with heartbreak confessionals like “Shit We Do For Love” and “Need You.” For casual listeners, the emotional resonance of these tracks might be surprising, but longtime fans have come to expect the moodier meanings that accompany Icona Pop’s upbeat sound.

“The pregnancy hormones helped us to write the saddest songs during a very beautiful time in our lives,” Jawo says with a laugh. A follow-up to their 2013 debut studio album This Is… Icona Pop, which catapulted them from underground clubs to the world stage, Club Romantech puts a refined touch on their signature brand of glittery synth-pop and exhilarating EDM. Like past Icona Pop projects, it’s best experienced live—and thankfully, fans were able to do so as Hjelt and Jawo played the album’s hits, remixes, and bonus tracks from December’s Club Romantech (Deluxe Album) edition at a string of electrifying club shows, from New York and Dallas to Montreal and beyond. Happening a decade after their debut, the tour had a special nostalgic quality for artists and audiences alike.

“The best thing was to meet the core fans that have been with us from the beginning, that came with all the old CDs, old pictures, and to hug them and say, ‘Thank you. Sorry, we haven’t been here for such a long time,’” Hjelt recalls. While the duo may be back home in Stockholm now, the Club Romantech party hasn’t stopped. February 9, the multiplatinum creatives blessed us with a tech-house-infused rendition of “Tears On The Dancefloor”—the very same version they played on tour last year. The first seconds of the live-wire beat make it impossible to resist dancing along, while the silky vocals make you forget that they’re singing about crying at the club. That’s the magic of Icona Pop, and exactly what has fans around the globe begging for more albums (in less than 10 years, of course). 

Below, read V’s extended convo with Icona Pop where Hjelt and Jawo spill about crafting Club Romantech, guest-judging on Drag Race, and what’s currently brewing in the studio.

V: 2023 saw you guys doing a string of club shows across the U.S. How was that experience?

Caroline Hjelt: It was so much fun. We’ve been touring so much in the States throughout the years, so just revisiting some places was so much fun. The best thing was to meet our core fans that have been with us from the beginning, that came with old CDs, and old pictures, and to hug them and say, ‘Thank you. Sorry, we haven’t been here for such a long time.’ It was a lot of crying in the meet-and-greets because we got so emotional. But we have the best fans. And it was so nice to physically reconnect with them.

Aino Jawo: The tour was like a DJ show. We’ve done a lot of live touring, but the DJ shows are a little bit different from the live shows. It’s a fun way to dance with your fans at a club. Also, we did one tour just before the pandemic, but then the pandemic hit and we put that on hold. So it was super fun [to be back]. We want to do it more. Can’t wait!

V: On February 9, you released the DJ edit of “Tears On The Dance Floor” that you were playing at those shows. What made you decide to go in a tech-house direction with this rendition?

CH: It was just us playing around because we wanted to put it in our DJ set even before [the edit] was released. So we were like, how can we make it fit our DJ set? We love the original, but we felt like it needed to be a little bit more uptempo. 

AJ: It’s also nice to hear and do edits on your songs because they can become really different. It gives you another perspective on the song. When we do live shows, we actually mix between the tech-house one and the original one. We do that with a lot of our songs, depending on what festival, and what club—there are so many versions of every song.

V: How has your perspective on Club Romantech changed after performing it live and seeing people’s reactions in real-time?

AJ: One of the tracks that we notice people enjoy when we play it live is “Faster.” There’s just something in the air. And that’s been one of our favorite songs. We wrote it really early in the process, and then we revisited it just before we dropped the album. We weren’t even sure that it was going to be on the album because it was so different from what we were thinking about. But it became a track on our album, and when we played it live, people were going crazy. There’s just this electric vibe going on, so that’s a fun one to play.

V: What was it like to tap into the sense of heartbreak and self-reflection on these songs, but also wrap it in such upbeat tempos and make songs that you want to dance to?

AJ: We always say that we love to disguise heartbreak music in dance music, because it makes it easier to handle the emotions you’re going through. And for me, at least, I feel like the best songs are usually the heartbreak songs. You have to tap into your old emotional side. But also, as Caroline said before, we were heavily pregnant during most of the time we were writing the album—and when you’re pregnant, you’re super emotional. The hormones are all over. The pregnancy hormones helped us to write the saddest songs during a very beautiful time in our lives.

CH: I also think, growing up, when we started our band, we were Club kids. We were a bunch of friends, and someone was always going through something. Then we met up at the club, and we were dancing it out. For us, that’s such a beautiful way of doing it. It’s like therapy. That’s what we wanted to do with this album: you can go through something, but you can also feel a liberating feeling when you’re standing there, dancing, singing to someone, or thinking of someone, and it can hurt and it can be beautiful at the same time.

V: With last year being the 10th anniversary of your debut full-length album, how do you feel about how your sound has evolved? What have you learned about your craft and yourselves over the last decade?

CH: I feel like it’s been such an amazing journey. We’ve been a band for 14 years, and I feel like with this album, in one way, we went back to our core. But we also explored a clubbier side. We’ve always had one leg in the club world and one in the pop world, and we love being there because we love that little middle space. When we went in and started writing Club Romantech, we were just like, ‘Okay, let’s have no rules, and let’s see where we end up.’ Because it was during the pandemic, we also had more time to explore and we realized pretty quickly that, ‘Oh, okay. This is gonna be pretty clubby.’ And we always joke that we wrote the clubbiest album during the quietest time when we were both pregnant. Maybe because we were dreaming of a way to go clubbing with our friends. 

Also, as an artist, you get inspired by different things and you want to grow. You don’t want to sound like your first song for the rest of your life. You want to challenge yourself, and I’m happy that we got the time to do that. We got so excited after releasing this album—we’re already in the studio writing the next one. It’s definitely not going to be 10 more years. We’re on fire. You should hear us.

V: Is there anything you can share about what you’re working on right now?

AJ: We just started the process. We had some songs that did not make it to the last album because they were not done, so we’re picking old demos but also writing new songs. We’re very, super open for anything, which is fun because it’s taking a different turn. It’s dance-inspired still, but I think it’s going to sound different.

CH: It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where we’re going this early in the process. But it feels a little bit soulful, mixed with the clubbiness [of Romantech]. And, yeah, it’s very fun. We’re messing around a lot with our voices and we’re very inspired.

V: You guys were recently guest judges on RuPaul’s Drag Race. I’m curious how that opportunity came about and how the whole experience was.

AJ: We’ve been huge fans of RuPaul for such a long time, so this was such a big thing for us. [The show’s producers] asked if we wanted to come and join them, and we were like, ‘Oh my god, it’s a no-brainer.’ We’d been watching the show. We’re big fans of the whole scene. And being there, it was so much fun. Everyone was so amazing and so nice and beautiful. We were like, ‘Why can’t every day be like this?’ It was an honor for us to be there.

V: What’s next for Icona Pop?

AJ: We have big plans. We can’t share everything, but we are going to release a lot of music. We’re going to tour. We’re going to both DJ and then also play with the live show we’ve been building. We’re super excited about it. And we have a big show coming up in Stockholm, in our hometown—which is always nerve-wracking because you see all your family members there. Also, we’re trying to write new music.

CH: We’re going to be more in Sweden for a while, just to be in the studio—because we know that once you start touring, it’s hard to get that studio time in. Traveling and just trying to be all over the world. So we are trying to be smart with our time and be more in one place during this spring. Then we’re just going to tour, have fun, and meet our fans.

Photography Richie Davis

Fashion Heather Picchiottino

Makeup Nick Lennon

Hair Cesar Ramirez

Hair Assistant Isaac Yu

Styling Assistant Landonu Rivera