Danish artist Alba Akvama’s debut EP is tasteful, intentional and slow. “Minute Nothing” has traces of American minimalism, bedroom pop sounds and Joni Mitchell – it comprises six songs which traverse a wide palette of influences but hang together through Akvama’s distinctive vision, vocals and songwriting.
Copenhagen alt-pop is undergoing, or has recently undergone, a somewhat counterintuitive digital boom. Despite the scene’s commitment to stillness, introspection and reflection, it was picked up in 2025 as the hip new thing by Tiktok and Spotify algorithms alike and exploded beyond the limits of the Danish capital to become something more symbolic than geographical. Mark William Lewis is one non-Danish artist whose music lives in that world of “Cph+” – and whose UK tour Akvama recently supported.
“Mark and his band were a great inspiration for me in how to keep an audience engaged without compromising too much on the inwardness of the music,” she told The Cold Magazine. Akvama views her live sets holistically, prioritising narrative, flow and total immersion rather than simply as a means to get her songs to a wider audience. “When you see a play, movie or an opera, the audience is offered a specific landscape and universe, visually and sonically, to immerse yourself in. A big part of making art is offering escapism and an alternate world that you can disappear in.”
Akvama is a graduate from the Rhythmic Music Conservatory, or RMC, which has spawned a number of trailblazers at the forefront of the Copenhagen scene (Astrid Sonne, ML Buch, Henriette Motzfeldt of Smerz, to name a few). She describes the school as a vibrant hub of community and critical approaches to music-making – but adds that now, as an independent artist, she is in the process of unlearning everything the institution taught her.
“I’ve been very influenced by American minimalists such as Julius Eastman, Philip Glass and Meredith Monk. I love music that insists on a moment, that never shifts, but gradually progresses, and I wanted to try and create that feeling on ‘Sink Below’.” The song is driven by a restless but gentle motif handed around a midi orchestra – it is certainly insistent. Her vocals only appear halfway through the track, almost surprising on what feels like an instrumental piece, with the most abstract and minimal lyrics of the EP: “I pull him close / Sink down below / Kissing waves / I’m all alone.”
At the other end of the spectrum is the EP’s following track, “Blue Body”. Inspired by Joni Mitchell, even quoting her lyrics directly, it “plays a little bit more with fiction and romance than the rest of the songs.” It’s a sweeping, romantic, narrative-driven singer-songwriter track that shows off the sentimental side of Akvama’s capabilities better than any other on the EP, reaching for image and metaphor with abandon: “Oh, my darling / Sail with me down the river / I’d like to keep you / Keep you forever.’”
The general atmosphere of “Minute Nothing” is impressionistic and withheld. “I was aiming to create space for people’s own interpretation, and make them paint their own landscapes,” she tells me. “I hope people listen to the record while on the go – on a train, on the bike, walking, on a plane, etc.’”
Part of the record’s appeal is exactly its restraint, although when I ask about her editing process Akvama describes that she barely has one. “The songs stayed quite true to their initial form. I wanted to honour that initial expression. I’ve learned a way to produce that feels intuitive and natural to me, and the set-up’s always quite sparse and transportable – which perhaps is why the music ends up sounding minimalistic.”
There is virtue in staying still in what is often such a fast-paced, unreflective culture, and Akvama’s music stays true to that principle: it goes against the hook-driven, addictive, earworm pop that tends to push Tiktok feeds and prioritises instant gratification over pause and meditation. “Everyone’s walking around with heads like bee nests, constantly overstimulated and buzzing. It seems like either you wanna listen to music that mimics that fast-paced chaotic world, or music that forces you to stay still for a while. For me, creating music is about escaping the world for a while, and I think we all have some things we do in order to pause and breathe.”