Pitchfork.tv: Lykke Li: "Breaking It Up" [Video]

Like a Swedish-pop Stevie Nicks, Lykke Li has made billowing clothes, long blonde hair, chunky jewelery, headbands, and a vague mystical sense all key aspects of her artistic persona. The video for "Breaking It Up", one of the catchiest songs from debut LP Youth Novels, also incorporates the "express yourself don't repress yourself" sexuality of a Madonna or Fiona Apple clip. On Kleerup's excellent "Until We Bleed", Li is the vulnerable, emotionally fucked-up one, but "Breaking It Up", like previous video choice "I'm Good, I'm Gone", puts her in the driver's seat.

She still sounds kind of emotionally fucked up, though. "I let you think that I'm yours when I'm not," Li sings, leading a lover on when he's close even though she knows it's not going to last; "If we're just waiting a second too long/ Darling I'll leave and you won't come along." The video shows Li, with her Nicksian garb and heavy eye makeup, dancing in a bare, warehouse-like room around scantily clad men and women who are, you know, like, tied to the bed and stuff. Which, as Arab Strap's Aidan Moffat will tell you, might be-- to paraphrase Juno-- a little above most kids' maturity level.

[from Youth Novels; out now on LL Recordings]