For this week’s 10 Questions we catch up with Todd & Karen who can also be found on Twitter/X, Facebook and Instagram.
It’s been too long since their first 10 Questions interview, so we asked them 10 brand new questions.
Lets dive in!
1. For those that aren’t already familiar, tell us about the music of Todd & Karen.
For those who have followed us from the beginning, they would probably say our music is “Beatleesque”, or Britpop-inspired. And that’s very true. There are few things we love more in our musical life than The Beatles…and Pink Floyd…and The Divine Comedy…and Belle & Sebastian….Pulp…Oasis…Blur…The Kinks. The list of British influences are endless. However, we also come from backgrounds where both folk music and classical has played its parts, so there’s also quite a lot of those influences in our music. If you listen to earlier songs like “L12” you’ll hear the folk (and even country rock) influence, for example…and an early single like “Barbara Barbara Barbara” features some classic influences in the violin parts. Having said all this, we can also be partial to pure pop! Have a listen to “Juicy Gossip From The Mothership” if you doubt us. A rule we’ve put for ourselves is that each new single release should sound quite radically different from the previous one, but also hopefully have some distinctive traits that people recognise as “The Todd & Karen Sound”.
2. Tell us about your recent release.
Our latest release is a 2-track single entitled “The Thrift Store Spaceship“. It came out on July 24th, 2026. It consists of the title track, which is largely instrumental and quite a departure from anything we’ve done earlier. Once again we team up with our good friend Trick Knobs (real name Connor Cathey) – he also worked with us on our previous single “WORK” (alongside William Lovitt and Albert Nesbø Baker). He’s helped us produce and mix the tracks and adds keyboards, some guitar and bass magic to the track. Do us a favour and check his solo stuff out! Anyway, the title track is inspired by the lounge and chill out music of French band AIR, but also by mid-era Pink Floyd and prog. We thought it would be cool to see what that style would sound like in a Todd & Karen context. It got to be quite guitar heavy and a bit surf inspired as well. In hindsight we can hear some traces of The Shadows and Norwegian cult heroes Kåre & The Cavemen in there as well, which we are chuffed with. We also want to give a shoutout to Sondre Johan Nørsterud and Albert Corbisier-Berge, aka “Spelegutta”, a local folk music duo who adds traditional, Norwegian Hardanger fiddle to the end of the track.
The b-side, “Final Orbit”, is a more straightforward, Beatleesque psychedelic affair with clear nods to Blur, The Divine Comedy and perhaps a little Belle & Sebastian. A friend of ours said he could detect some Neil Young in there too. It follows up the space theme a bit, so it made sense to couple these together for a double single.
Why “The Thrift Store Spaceship”? Someone uttered these word in a podcast and it just got us going. Sometimes it takes little to make the little grey musical cells start churning.
3. What are your plans for the future?
Well, that’s the beautiful and perhaps frustrating thing about Todd & Karen. There’s no grand plan to anything. The music just happens when it happens. What we can say is that we have a large back log of songs we hope to get around to recording, and new ones keep popping up. Currently we are working on as wildly different things as an ode to Agatha Christie (which promises to be quite a banger!), we have a song about a man with seven wives and there might be a football anthem in the pipeline. Say no more. Also, after we concluded what we call “chapter 1” with the compilation “Singles” (2024), we’ve started collaborating with other artists. That’s something we hope to do more of on more tracks going forward. It’s fun to add some other perspectives into the duo format.
4. Are there any artists that have an influence on your music that people wouldn’t expect?
We do listen to a lot of different music. People might be surprised to hear that AIR is an inspiration to us – at least if they haven’t heard “The Thrift Store Spaceship”. Radiohead has also been a band that Øyvind has been following passionately throughout their career. A-ha, Norway’s big pop heroes, is another huge inspiration. We also enjoy post-rock acts like Sigur Ros and Mogwai and more electronic acts like Röyksopp and Chemical Brothers. There are lots of great compositions in many genres out there.
5. If you could collaborate with any NAS artist who would it be?
We already collaborated with William Lovitt on “WORK” and loved the process and how that turned out! It would be great to do more songs with the Funkmaster himself down the line. To be honest, we’re open to lots of collabs with the NAS crowd. Bring them on!
We have known Kelly Cresswell for a good few years, pre-NAS even, and have floated the idea about maybe doing a duet at some point. That could be very cool.
6. Which NAS artists would you love to see a collaboration from?
It would be cool to see something no one saw coming. How about Franklin & Bell feat. The DamnedKirai, for example? You heard it here first!
7. Which NAS artists would you like to see play live?
Charles Connolly doing the “Hands Up!” album sporting a full backing band with “Spotlight” as his encore would be a great gig! We’re happy to do the support slot, just give us a ring, Charles.
8. How many instruments do you play and which instrument(s) would you like to learn?
Between us we play quite a few instruments. Guitar, bass, keyboards, piano, violin, ukulele…and then we dabble in other instruments. There are instruments we can make quite nice sounds come out of if we try a little extra. If you listen to “L12” on our “Singles” album you’ll hear a banjo riff, and on our latest “The Thrift Store Spaceship” you’ll hear the banjo return together with a mandolin. Øyvind used to play cornet/trumpet and flugelhorn in a brass band also, so if pushed and with some practice, those could be utilised as well.
9. Other than your usual ones, which genres would you like to explore?
We would like to explore some shoegaze, probably. We have a couple of ideas on the backburner that could lend themselves very well to that kind of soundscape. There’s also a song of ours kicking about entitled “Scenic Delaware” which sounds very power pop – Big Star meets Weezer – with a very noisy guitar chorus. Maybe we’ll get around to releasing that one of these days.
10. Tell us about an artist (NAS or otherwise) that you have discovered recently?
We would like to mention Norwegian artist Haakon Ellingsen. He was in a band called The Last James who made a brilliant eponymous album in the 90s and then they disappeared. In the last couple of years, he’s cropped up again as a solo artist and keeps churning out really wonderful, brilliant and melodious 60s influenced pop music. Check out his “Thank You For Your Letter/Dear Old Sun” EP from earlier this year. Fab stuff. Recommended. The whistling part on “Dear Old Sun” is really genius. Super catchy.
Leave a Reply