This week's woman is Karin Dreijer Andersson, one half of electro duo The Knife. The brother and sister pair sent two Guerilla Girls in t-shirts with 50:50 (a reference to the gender divide in the music industry) to pick up their Swedish Grammy. As part of The Knife Karin warps voices and mixes dark sounds with great pop melodies to make music that blurs traditional gender stereotypes: "I know it's a different situation in the rest of Europe, but in Sweden, the feminist debate has gone a lot farther than in many other European countries. I know in the US, you have Kathleen Hanna, Guerilla Girls, and the Riot Grrls movement, and a lot of bands who we say they are feminist, but it doesn't exist in Europe in the same way."
With her brother Olof they refuse overtly intrusive publicity material preferring to wear masks and costumes, creating identities for themselves that are just as "real" as conventional celebrity identities. Of their poppier first album, Deep Cuts Karin says: "We wanted to show our ideas about feminism and other kinds of ideas, in very obvious, and very pop packaging." Their appropriately named second album Silent Shout is a darker, subtler affair but still has sweet veins of pop sensibility running through.
