Press

Yaeger grew up on a tiny island in Sweden where, as a teenager, she discovered a portal. The glowing box she logged into each evening after school opened up entire other worlds – a treasure chest of music, movies, chatrooms, and forums. The internet and the freedom it offered would later become the inspiration for Piratebae, her debut album. Since releasing debut single ‘ocean’ in 2017, Hanna Jäger has developed a sound pairing lyrical intimacy with earworm pop and club sounds at their most cutting-edge. Along the way she’s collaborated with Icona Pop and toured Europe with Zara Larsson in 2024, earning two Swedish Grammy nominations and praise from Elle and Billboard, while pop music forums continue to buzz about her work. It’s on her first album, however, that she fully realises a visual and sonic world – an exhilarating fusion of nostalgia and social commentary. Translating to “sharp”, Skarpö is in the Stockholm archipelago where Yaeger grew up, home to just 250 people. She spent most of her childhood outdoors, climbing trees, or listening to Max Martin-produced hits by Britney and the Backstreet Boys on CD. As she got older, though, the island felt suffocating and she felt the pull of online life. She’d post goofy selfies on Sweden’s Playahead social site and download American TV shows like The OC filled with sun-kissed people, dreaming of somewhere beyond Skarpö. For Yaeger, those early days of the internet feel charged with nostalgia: a time when being online was more anonymous and collective, and less about personal branding than the hyper-individualised social media worlds of today. Her native country produced two world-changing platforms in The Pirate Bay and Spotify – tools that rewrote the rules of music and culture – and it’s no coincidence that Piratebae arrives at a time when streaming, despite making its architects enormously wealthy, has failed to deliver fair compensation to artists. Some of Yaeger’s most formative moments came on sites like Limewire, where she’d scour the platform for indie rock and obscure remixes, discovering bands like The Shins for the first time. Taking singing lessons and performing at school, she went on to study at the Rytmus music school that birthed pop powerhouses Robyn and Tove Lo. After leaving, she began releasing singles on Soundcloud which caught the attention of managers and labels. But even at just 20, she was determined not to let big money or an influential label dictate her artistry, choosing instead the path of independence and creation on her own terms. It’s a path she describes as “crooked”, not least in part because of timing. Yaeger had built up to playing her first headline show in Stockholm just as Covid slammed a lid on the live music industry, and she was forced to cancel her plans. But she made things work: a track she self-funded by working a restaurant job and directed the music video for, ‘Can’t Get the Best of Me’, was hailed by Billboard, and around that time she met Sebastian Furrer, the producer she’d end up developing a close-knit working relationship with. In 2023 she put out Jaguar, with the title track sampling Boards of Canada, an EP that blew open her emotional rave pop sound, referencing everything from sleek piano house to sub-blowing drum ‘n’ bass. Piratebae pushes these ideas even further. Its production mirrors her aesthetic world: bubbles burst through the synths on ‘Poseidon’, while frothy textures wash over the electro-pop of ‘Take It! Take It!’ ‘We’re The Meds’, built on a stripped-back club sound, draws on the indignant politics of bands like The Hives as Yaeger takes aim at a political and social climate that stifles artistry, cuts creative funding and shuts down nightclubs – insisting that music is essential medicine in fraught times. ‘Pool House’ carries a darker charge, its strobing beats and rippling vocals inspired by the teen parties she attended, experiences she likens to scenes in Euphoria, where boys circled like sharks around the girls, creating a mix of thrill and unease. Opener ‘Baewatch’, its name a pointed 2010 throwback, celebrates the strong bond between women – a love letter to her best friends and the wild nights out they go on to forget life’s troubles, harpooning hot guys along the way. She’s always had strong female relationships – as a teenager she founded an all-female skate- and snowboarding club to empower other girls to get into extreme sports. One of the jumping off points for Piratebae was author of dark children’s stories Astrid Lindgren and her 1945 character Pippi Långstrump (Longstocking, in English). Yaeger started building a world in her head around that, tapping into the vivid imagination she’d had as a kid – her dad’s fishing boat would become a pirate ship, and a stone in the ocean became visiting a deserted island. Piratebae’s visuals bring these imaginative ideas to life: on her moodboard were early Billabong campaigns, noughties internet graphics, the TV series Lost and Tim Burton films. Then of course there’s the look: custom pirate hats designed by Stockholm brand LLL, Vivienne Westwood-esque silhouettes and a heavy spray tan. Alongside her distinctive fashion, Yaeger has developed her own beauty style, born from living with eczema. Unable to wear many conventional cosmetic products, she began focusing on her under-eye area, going bold with glitter, shine and colour to draw attention away from flare-ups or dry patches. The look also stands in deliberate opposition to the ultra-polished ‘clean beauty’ aesthetic which she sees as tied to a political climate that suppresses self-expression. It’s a topic she broaches on ‘Luminous’, in which she emphasises her love of messiness and adventure over looking presentable for a man. By weaving together the anarchic spirit of the early internet and the raw intimacy of pop, Yaeger has built a world that feels both personal and accessible – and she’s created a portal of her own, piratebae.org, for fans to dip into and uncover more of this lore. At a time when culture feels increasingly constrained by algorithms, Yaeger offers a reminder that music can be a place for connection, resistance and joy.