Serious, melancholy and introverted – just a few of the nearly-forgotten attributes that were long associated with Finnish pop. The duo Maustetytöt captivates listeners by putting a fresh spin on these, attracting new audiences with their sardonically romantic indie-pop hits.

Fifteen years ago, when siblings Anna and Kaisa Karjalainen played with their first band in the corner of a pizzeria in a small northern Finnish town, they didn’t think about playing music full-time or for big audiences. However, a musical hobby that began in childhood swept them along, even though Kaisa says that as grew up, they began to wonder more about getting “real careers”.

Things turned out differently, though. According to Kaisa, the siblings’ first Finnish-language band started as a drunken barroom joke, with no well-thought-out concept.

Kaisa, who grew up listening intensively to old Finnish music, says that at that time she was “quite out of it” in terms of contemporary music trends. Eventually, she and her sister ended up making music that was based solely on their own preferences – and as unfashionable and unsuitable for their time as one could imagine. Seven years later, Maustetytöt (Finnish for “Spice Girls”) is an international phenomenon.

Of course, a lot has changed during that time. Finnish iskelmä (schlager or popular song) and later Finnish rock and pop are national genres that for almost a century have been burdened by pervasive sadness and – like their American cousin, country and western music – a close relationship with alcohol. Especially since the turn of the millennium, Finnish musicians have begun to dismantle these clichés and question the oddities and problems surrounding these national musical traditions.

At the same time though, there has been growing appreciation of songwriting skills from older popular traditions, such as the synth hits from the Finnish recession era of the mid-90s and the quirky, bittersweet pop band Leevi and the Leavings (1978-2003), which had a strong influence on Maustetytöt.

Watch the video for Maustetytöt's debut single "Tein kai lottorivini väärin".

The World’s Happiest People

In the year 2022, the duo released a joint ep release with Agents, an old-school Finnish instrumental/surf rock band. Does the band feel creative power comes from nostalgia or digging into traditions, from breathing new spirit into them?

“People always insist that we’re nostalgic. But that style and production approach weren’t planned at all,” Kaisa Karjalainen replies.

“At first, it was just about having fun, but on the latest album, Maailman onnellisin kansa (“The World’s Happiest People”, 2023), we started to think more consciously about aesthetics and sound. That ‘80s sound world came from the fact that I just happened to have an old synth that was basically just a toy,” she recalls.

Of course, our worldview is pessimistic – you can hear that in our music. It also reflects the kind of music we grew up with – Kaisa Karjalainen (Maustetytöt)

Melodrama and storytelling are the guiding themes of Maustetytöt songs, often in a peculiar intermediate space between realism, everyday life and romanticism.

“Of course, our worldview is pessimistic – you can hear that in our music. It also reflects the kind of music we grew up with. That music is really melancholy. On the other hand, this style may be alien to today’s audiences. It makes us part of something that hasn’t been mainstream for decades,” says Kaisa.

Watch the video for Maustetytöt's song "Ei niin kovin suuri city" (2023).

Kaurismäki brings international awareness

Maustetytöt are well-known in Finland, far beyond indie rock and music-nerd circles. Internationally, they gained a new level of visibility when they appeared in Oscar-nominated director Aki Kaurismäki’s film Fallen Leaves (2023).

The scene in which the band performs laconically in a working-class beer bar in Helsinki is at once a tribute to Kaurismäki, the greatest portrayer of melancholy in Finnish cultural life, and at the same time a breath of fresh, contemporary air in the director’s otherwise mannered, retro cinematic world.

It would be great if as wide an audience as possible liked our music, but that can’t be our goal – Kaisa Karjalainen (Maustetytöt)

The band has been positively surprised by the interest shown in them across Europe because of the movie. In May 2024, the band headlined their first club tour abroad. They’ve appeared in France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Poland, Greece and Switzerland, as well as around Scandinavia.

Watch the music video based on the Aki Kaurismäki film scene (from "Fallen Leaves") to Maustetytöt's song Syntynyt suruun ja puettu pettymyksiin.

Ready for the world

At the time of this interview, Maustetytöt had just returned from their second German tour, playing seven gigs in as many days. Audiences included fans who were seeing the band for the third time, and some who attended every gig on the tour.

“We’ve played by far the most [foreign] gigs in Germany. The atmosphere there is very reminiscent of our early days of touring around Finland,” says Kaisa.

“The audience may not quite know what to expect, or what we’re all about. The audience profile is very similar to that in Finland, though, very heterogeneous, but there are more serious music enthusiasts and older people. And in general, audiences tend to be livelier everywhere outside Finland.”

The audience may not quite know what to expect, or what we’re all about – Kaisa Karjalainen (Maustetytöt)

On stage overseas, the band often wonders what the audience sees in them, since most listeners don’t understand the Finnish lyrics. The words and stories are an integral part of the band’s musical narrative and their means of building a dramatic arc, though. Surprisingly, listeners seem to immerse themselves in the atmosphere and to understand the images and influences.

“Of course, it would be great if as wide an audience as possible liked our music, but that can’t be our goal. I can’t say whether our music really has Finnish characteristics, because I don’t know what they are these days,” she says.

“I think mainstream music here – like everywhere else in the world – is very similar.”

Watch the video for "Salattu suru" by Maustetytöt and Agents, from the two bands' collaborative ep release Maustetytöt X Agents (2022).