Tove Lo

Djursholm, Rytmus, and a song that took a year to land

Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson was born on 29 October 1987 in Helsingborg and grew up in Djursholm, on the wealthy northern edge of Stockholm. She went through Rytmus Musikergymnasiet, the Stockholm music school that has fed a large share of Swedish pop, and spent 2006 to 2009 in a math-rock band called Tremblebee before turning to pop properly. A publishing deal with Warner/Chappell followed in 2011, and for a while the work was other people's: sessions in the orbit of Max Martin and of the Xenomania team, and a co-writing credit on Ellie Goulding's 'Love Me Like You Do' that brought both Grammy and Golden Globe nominations.

Her own record moved more slowly. 'Habits (Stay High)' was a sleeper — it circulated for months before it climbed, eventually reaching number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and going eight times platinum in the United States, while Hippie Sabotage's remix, 'Stay High', went to number six in the UK. The debut album 'Queen of the Clouds' came on 24 September 2014 through Island, entering at number 14 on the Billboard 200, number six in Sweden and number 17 in the UK. The pattern set there — blunt writing about sex, drugs and the aftermath, carried on Scandinavian pop production — has not really changed since, only darkened.

Five albums, then a label of her own

'Lady Wood' (28 October 2016) was the commercial high point: her first Swedish number one and number 11 in the US. 'Blue Lips' followed on 17 November 2017 as its stated second half, and 'Sunshine Kitty' on 20 September 2019, which produced 'Glad He's Gone' and a Grammy nomination for its video. The singles across that stretch did steadier work than the albums: 'Talking Body' reached number 12 on the Hot 100 and went five times platinum; 'Cool Girl' only got to number 84 but was certified platinum and has outlasted most of what charted above it.

The break came in 2022. 'Dirt Femme', released 14 October 2022, was the first Tove Lo album issued through Pretty Swede Records, the label she set up herself, working with the artist-services company mtheory rather than a major. It produced 'No One Dies from Love' and '2 Die 4', which reached numbers 26 and 19 in Sweden respectively. Leaving Island did not obviously cost her anything live, and it gave her the thing the next record needed: nobody to clear a 13-track album about eating disorders with.

'Estrus': the sixth record, 18 September 2026

Tove Lo announced 'Estrus' on 11 May 2026 and released 'I'm your girl right?' two days later. 'Des fleurs', featuring the French-Belgian singer Stromae, followed on 12 June, and 'DNH' on 29 July. The album itself arrived on 18 September 2026 through Pretty Swede Records with Virgin Music Group: 13 tracks, 32 minutes and 28 seconds, written and recorded across Los Angeles, Stockholm and a small Swedish fishing village where she spent childhood summers.

The core team is Ludvig Söderberg, a collaborator going back years whose other credits include Lorde and Zara Larsson, with Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser; A Strut, Oscar Görres and Oscar Holter also produce. The title is literal. 'Estrus is an animal in heat,' she said at announcement. 'It's primal. It's my mind and my body wanting different things, wanting everything.' The subject matter is heavier than the framing suggests — depression, disordered eating, family conflict, a breakup, loss.

Early reviews have read it as a deliberate turn away from the disco-lit confessionals of 'Dirt Femme'. musicOMH gave it four stars out of five, hearing Robyn and The Knife behind the production and describing a record 'completely content in ditching the hunt for solutions'; it singled out 'I'm the cake' as the one unambiguous piece of swagger and 'des fleurs' as the moment Stromae lifts the whole thing. The opening line of the album — 'I got a lot of anger, but no retributions' — is a fair summary of what follows.

Where things stand now

The ESTRUS tour runs from 15 September to 19 November 2026 and was routed so that the North American shows sat on either side of release week. It opened at the Pinnacle in Nashville on 15 September, played the Salt Shed in Chicago on 16 September and Under the K Bridge Park in Brooklyn on 19 September, the day after the album came out, with Toronto's Coca-Cola Coliseum, the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on 27 September and the Pepsi Center WTC in Mexico City on 1 October to close the leg.

After roughly a month off, the tour crosses to Europe in November: Manchester's O2 Victoria Warehouse on 5 November, the O2 Academy Brixton in London on 7 November, then Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen and Oslo, finishing at the Avicii Arena in Stockholm on 19 November — a hometown arena show to end an album cycle she financed and released herself. Support is split by territory: the Australian singer Mallrat on the North American dates, with the Swedish club artist Cobrah taking Brooklyn, and Rose Gray across the European leg.

What the show is doing

The set has settled fast. In Brooklyn on 19 September she played from 10.05pm to 11.40pm — an hour and thirty-five minutes — and the setlist ran to 34 entries once the taped interludes that split the night into sections are counted, eleven of them drawn from 'Estrus'. That is an unusually high proportion of new material for an album three days old, and it holds because the new songs are short.

The staging is not a dance production. Reviewing the Nashville opener, the Vanderbilt Hustler described black backdrops, white strobes, smoke and surrounding screens, with flame imagery on the displays and green lasers sweeping the room, and noted there were no backing dancers — Tove Lo climbed across the stage, whipped her hair through instrumental breaks and painted her own eyelids black towards the end. The bass, the review said, could be felt before the stage could be seen, and the venue turned into something closer to a nightclub than a concert hall. The loudest moments were still 'Grapefruit' and 'Cool Girl', sung back word for word.