Elín Hall shares new single ‘Wolf Boy’

Elín Hall – the award-winning artist leading the Icelandic vanguard in both music and cinema – returns with new single ‘Wolf Boy’. Following the meteoric success of Hall’s Icelandic-language album heyríst í mér? which was crowned Album of the Year at the Reykjavík Grapevine Music Awards, its arrival marks a star-in-ascent who is poised for international breakthrough.

Praised for the novelistic depth of her songwriting – “a Swiss army knife of sharp metaphors tempered with unflinching truths” (The Line of Best Fit) – ‘Wolf Boy’ realises her gifts on a universal scale. It follows on from the sound which commenced this new era, ‘Heaven To A Heathen’ – conjured to life with Grammy-winning producer Martin Terefe – and an incendiary performance at Bludfest earlier this summer.

Written in English, her storytelling takes on new shades. Over smouldering, inky electric guitars which lends it a cinematic dignity, Hall’s voice is as intimate as it is endlessly expansive. She explores what it means to be cast as a villain, betraying the grief behind the growl; a portrait of someone caught between who they are and who they’ve been made to be.

Speaking on ‘Wolf Boy’, she shares: “When I wrote Wolf Boy, I wasn’t trying to set the record straight. I was more interested in the version of me that existed in someone else’s story. In a lot of my earlier songs, I’ve written from the place of feeling misunderstood or hurt. But this time, I was drawn to the idea of being seen as the villain. Not because I believed it entirely, but because that was the role I ended up in. And instead of resisting it, I leaned in. There’s something compelling about stepping into the version of yourself that someone else creates, especially when it’s darker than you see yourself. It can reveal just as much as telling your side of the story, sometimes even more. I’ve come to think that the truth usually lives somewhere in between two versions of events. Wolf Boy lives in that space, in the tension between perception and reality, blame and love, myth and memory.”

Alongside being one of Iceland’s leading luminaries in music, Hall’s craft as an actress has reached new heights. Her Cannes-selected role in When the Light Breaks (2024) earned Best Actress at the Chicago International Film Festival and Iceland’s Edda Awards, and she was selected as European Shooting Star 2025.

Later this month, she will support Smashing Pumpkins in Reykjavík, after representing Iceland earlier this year during BBC Radio 1’s Europe’s Biggest Gig. In November, she will make her return to her country’s iconic festival, Iceland Airwaves.

 

LIVE DATES

July 26 – Bræðslan Festival, Iceland

August 23 – Culture Night, Iceland

August 26 – Open for Smashing Pumpkins, Iceland (link) 

November 8 – Iceland Airwaves, Iceland