It’s late afternoon and, in the shabby chic hallway of Dublin’s Workmans’ Club, bellies are growling. “Sorry but we have to eat,” says Klara Söderberg, younger half of the year’s hottest – and least likely – folk sensation, First Aid Kit. “Somewhere Asian would be nice,” adds older sister Johanna, a willowy blonde whose likeness to fellow Stockholm native Lykke Li verges on uncanny. “You can come with us if you like. We can eat and chat.”

We’re tempted – but what about the Hot Press photographer? Can he tag along too? “Ugh,” says Johanna, miming stuffing her gob with noodles. “I don’t think I want my picture taken while I do this…”
We agree to reconvene an hour later, squeezing onto a banquette at the Workmans’ downstairs bar – how lonely it feels without all the hipsters. First on the agenda: what’s it like being the buzziest new alternative country act of the moment?
“It’s been amazing – and so hard to see coming,” says Klara, initially the more approachable of the two. “The kind of music we make, you don’t expect it to become a big deal. The reception has been fantastic and totally unexpected.”
We tell them their Dublin show is so preposterously over-subscribed international journalists flying in to cover the event are having a job getting in.
“We are hearing things like that all the time. Our new album went to number one in Sweden. And this isn’t the kind of band that’s supposed to go to No. 1 in Sweden.”
With entwined vocals and weightless guitars, First Aid Kit’s music is somewhere past sublime, dreamy and escapist yet with intimations of below-the-surface darkness. The sisters have been likened to everyone from Emmylou Harris and Joanna Newsom. The comparison they get most often is Fleet Foxes, largely on account of their viral YouTube cover of that group’s pantheist hymnal ‘Tiger Mountain Peasant Song’, recorded on the fly in woods near their home.
“In the suburbs of Stockholm there are forests everywhere,” explains Johanna, warming as the conversation proceeds. “We went up there and did the cover. The day we put it up, Fleet Foxes got in contact to say they loved it. We started getting more and more views and realised we could do this, we could make a career of it.”
For all the clip’s success, they quickly became ambivalent about ‘Tiger Mountain Peasant Song’.
“People always expected us to play the Fleet Foxes track,” says Klara. “You’d get things like, ‘Oh, they’re just a covers band’. Two years after we’d put it on the web, we were still being asked for it at shows. So we stopped doing it. The great thing is that we haven’t played it for a long time, so we feel we can go back again. It isn’t something that’s easy to get bored of.”
When their YouTube cover blew up, Johanna was 16, Klara 14. Even in buttoned-down Sweden, the music industry is a bit of a snake-pit. Fortunately they were able to call on the advice of a veteran who’d been chewed up by the business and crawled out the other side.
“In the ‘80s, our dad was in a band in Sweden,” says Klara. “They were pretty big. Then Johanna was born and he finished it.”
“I don’t think that’s quite why it ended,” older sister chimes in. “They fell apart. The band members weren’t getting along. They were rowing about the direction they were going in. It was going too mainstream. They changed their sound a lot.”
It’s got to be useful having Dad around to strong-arm unscrupulous promoters and sleazy label bosses.
“He has helped a lot,” Klara nods. “It’s so easy to get run over in this business. Especially when you’re as young as we were starting out. He used to teach high school. Recently he gave it up. He helps us out on the road now.”
So is he in Dublin with them?
“Yes, he does our sound,” says Klara gesturing over her shoulder. “He’s back there right now.”
They look a bit perturbed when asked how they’re received at home. It turns out they’re bone fide stars in Sweden. Frankly this is getting to be a pain.
“We get recognised all the time,” Johanna grimaces. “It’s annoying.”
Their Swedish stardom can be traced to a specific event: an awards ceremony where they performed Patti Smith’s ‘Dancing Barefoot’ before an audience that included the downtown poet herself – she was seen to tear up on live TV, so moved was she by the sisters’ singing.
“It was on television and loads of people saw it,” Johanna recalls. “We never get nervous. But that was the most terrifying thing we’ve ever done. It was an honour to play for her. On the other hand, there was a lot of pressure. Everyone in my family is the hugest fan. When my mother got the phone call about it, she ran into the living-room crying.”
Wisely, they chose not to meet Smith until after the performance. She was everything they had imagined.
“Her personality and her charisma… they are just astonishing,” Klara beams. “She was so warm and loving and down to earth.”
They have no idea why Swedish bands travel so well. What they do know is that being from Scandinavia is an enormous advantage when selling your music abroad. People assume you know your way around a pop song.
“It’s definitely a bonus,” Klara agrees. “The reaction is, ‘Oh, you’re Swedish’. It’s like you get extra points. What’s the secret? We are always asked that. They don’t put anything special in the water, as far as I can tell.”
On their wanderings the band are constantly queried about their accents, which tend towards So-Cal valley girl drawl. Scandinavians speaking with American inflections are no novelty to worldly Europeans. However, in the land of the brave where the band have spent some time (they recorded new album The Lion’s Roar with Bright Eyes’ Mike Mogis at his Omaha Nebraska recording studio) it is a source of endless fascination. They were expecting the Swedish chef out of The Muppets perhaps?
“Well, I can do a ‘Swedish’ accent if you like,” says Klara, breaking into an impromptu hurdy gurdy hurdy.”
“We grew up on American television,” adds Johanna. “It’s natural we would speak English the way we do. We wouldn’t want people to think we are trying to something we are not. That’s the important point: we aren’t faking anything.”
They have to soundcheck in a minute but we can’t leave without asking the question that has been on our minds since the start. Do Swedish people really gather around the TV to watch Donald Duck cartoons on Christmas Eve? It sounds like an urban myth that’s lost the run of itself.
“It’s true,” Klara shrieks. “Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Donald Duck. I remember one year, I was spending Christmas in America. I was saying to everybody, ‘I gotta see Donald Duck, I gotta see Donald Duck!’ They look at me like I was crazy.”