Die Hei­ter­keit

In her demonstrably unmodulated style, Stella Sommer sings and purrs her way through the songs of a project that has set the counterpoint to the contemporary pop standard over the last 15 years. Instead of more pomp, noise and glitter, in whatever form, Die Heiterkeit, as an all-female trio in the early 2010s, favoured deceleration and well-dosed ennui. But that doesn’t mean their sepia-tinted singer-songwriter pop lacks active impetus: the trio’s songs feature disillusioned self-reflections with no trace of victim mentality. As a result, albums such as the debut ‘Herz aus Gold’ (2012) sound like thoughtfully brittle slowcore, while the cool weltschmerz on ‘Pop & Tod I+II’ (2016), released after numerous internal band rejigs, has something more sacred about it. This always enchantingly ethereal project are never at a loss for change, and most recently presented another page in the serenely cheerful lexicon of contradictions and objections with ‘Schwarze Magie’ (2025). They’re well worth looking up, live and in colour.