Yaeger

Yaeger grew up on a tiny island in Sweden where, as a teenager, she discovered the internet as a portal to entirely new worlds of music, movies, chatrooms and forums. That freedom would later inspire Piratebae, her debut album. Since releasing her debut single ‘ocean’ in 2017, Hanna Jäger has developed a sound that pairs lyrical intimacy with cutting-edge pop and club music. She has collaborated with Icona Pop, toured Europe with Zara Larsson, earned two Swedish Grammy nominations and praise from Elle and Billboard. With Piratebae, she fully realises a visual and sonic world where nostalgia meets social commentary. Yaeger grew up in Skarpö, a tiny island in the Stockholm archipelago, spending her childhood outdoors while listening to Max Martin-produced pop. As she grew older, the island felt increasingly suffocating, and she found an escape online, discovering music, TV and a world beyond Skarpö. Her nostalgia for the early internet comes from a time when being online felt more anonymous and collective, before today’s hyper-individualised social media. Growing up in the country that gave the world The Pirate Bay and Spotify, Yaeger became fascinated by the ways technology could reshape music and culture—and by the contradictions of a streaming economy that still fails to fairly compensate artists. After taking singing lessons and studying at Rytmus, the Stockholm music school that produced Robyn and Tove Lo, Yaeger began releasing music independently on SoundCloud. Even at 20, she was determined to keep control of her artistry rather than let money or labels dictate her direction. Her path has been “crooked”. Covid forced her to cancel her first Stockholm headline show, but she continued independently, self-funding and directing the video for ‘Can’t Get the Best of Me’, which was praised by Billboard. Around the same time, she met producer Sebastian Furrer, with whom she developed a close creative relationship. In 2023, Jaguar expanded her emotional rave-pop sound, moving from sleek piano house to bass-heavy drum ’n’ bass. Piratebae pushes those ideas further. Its production mirrors Yaeger’s visual world, from bubbling synths and frothy electro-pop to the stripped-back club sounds of ‘We’re The Meds’, where she takes aim at a political climate that stifles artistry, cuts creative funding and shuts down nightclubs. The album also explores darker and more playful sides of her world. ‘Pool House’ draws on teenage parties, mixing thrill with unease, while ‘Baewatch’ celebrates female friendship and wild nights out. Yaeger has long championed strong female relationships, having founded an all-female skate- and snowboarding club as a teenager. Inspired in part by Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Långstrump, Yaeger built Piratebae around the vivid imagination of her childhood. Her father’s fishing boat became a pirate ship, while the ocean opened onto deserted islands. Early Billabong campaigns, noughties internet graphics, Lost and Tim Burton shaped the album’s visual world, alongside pirate hats, Westwood-esque silhouettes and a distinctive beauty aesthetic. Her beauty style grew from living with eczema, leading her to emphasise her under-eye area with glitter, shine and colour rather than conventional cosmetics. The deliberately messy look challenges the ultra-polished “clean beauty” aesthetic and its pressure to conform, a theme explored on ‘Luminous’. By combining the anarchic spirit of the early internet with the raw intimacy of pop, Yaeger has created a world that feels both personal and accessible. Through Piratebae, she offers her own portal into a universe of music, imagination, resistance and joy—at a time when culture increasingly feels constrained by algorithms. FOR FANS OF : Zara Larsson, Tove lo, MØ