2023 was quite a year for Celebs. They started it all off with competing in the local Eurovision Preliminaries, ‘Söngvakeppnin’, coming in 3rd place with the song ‘Doomsday Dancing’.They followed that success up with the summer hit ‘Bongó, blús & næs’ which topped the carts of RÁS2 (Iceland’s biggest radio station, reaching over 75% of the nation) in July. In August a national Vodafone campaign debuted which featured Celebs’ cover of 90s classic ‘Ég sé rautt’, a campaign that is scheduled to run throughout 2024. To top it all off, they released their first English language single, the house and disco tune, ‘I Love My Siblings’, and debuted it live at the Iceland Airwaves festival to great success, garnering praise from Ariana Morgenstern at KCRW and Pitchfork’s Jeremy D. Larson.
The idea for Celebs was born when the three siblings, Valgeir, Keli and Katla, found themselves under one roof at their parents’ house back in their hometown of Suðureyri (population 294) during Christmas 2019. During an intense discussion about their love of live music they quickly came to a decision: they would start a party band. Their vision was to offer audiences an escape—an opportunity to leave their worries at the door and enter a unique experience of chaotic euphoria, full of curiosity, play and enthusiastic joy. Citing influences like FM Belfast and The Flaming Lips, Celebs are fast becoming a favourite in the Icelandic live music scene. Their debut EP ‘Tálvon hinna efnilegu’(2021) was nominated for an Icelandic Music Award, the Kraumur Awards and the Icelandic Listener Choice Awards in 2021, with singles ‘Kannski hann’ and ‘Kalk í vatni’ garnering substantial radio play.
Despite their young ages, all three members of Celebs have extensive experience in the music industry. Each has won the national music competition ‘The Music Experiments’—the brothers wit
h indie rock outfit ‘Rythmatik’ in 2015, and Katla with the alt-pop duet turned solo project ‘Between Mountains’ in 2017 (at only 14 years old). This early success was the inspiration behind their name, a tongue-in-cheek reference to how it feels returning to your hometown after having become ‘world famous’ in Iceland. This ongoing joke was the inspiration behind the latest single ‘I Love My Siblings’. “We were hanging in the studio one day, joking about music industry clichés,” says singer Keli “like what would be the typical thing to happen to a wide-eyed band of young country hicks if they would have made it in the big city?” -“The first thing we came up with was that the sibling dynamic would become really dramatic and we’d be shit-talking each other in the tabloids.” chimes in Katla. “It then morphed into how the music industry probably would have chewed us up and spit us out, leading to a ‘dreadful demolition’ of our spirits as the lyrics say. We found this particularly funny because the Icelandic music industry is incredibly small and we almost exclusively work with our very close friends.”
“Yeah,” adds Valgeir. “Our experience of the music industry has been hilariously wholesome.”
Celebs headlined ‘Aldrei fór ég suður’ festival on their home turf in the West Fjords of the Island earlier in 2024. The performance was a sentimental return as Celebs made their live debut at the same festival in 2022, captured beautifully in the music video for single “Kalk í vatni”. Celebs recorded the performance and will be releasing it in 2024.