Tove Lo: Portola Music Festival 2026

Crafting a raw, confessional brand of pop shaped by her love of grunge as well as the pristine sounds of her Swedish homeland, Tove Lo is an award-winning performer and Grammy-nominated songwriter. The way her 2013 single "Habits (Stay High)" swung between joy and despair and frankly depicted drug use and sex made it a distinctive, relatable, multi-platinum hit and a fitting introduction to her uncensored style. She followed it with more uninhibited, autobiographical music: Her 2014 debut album Queen of the Clouds and 2016's Lady Wood upheld her reputation for confronting the darker side of love and relationships with thoughtful, provocative, and catchy songwriting. On 2019's Sunshine Kitty, she took a slightly more lighthearted approach without losing any of her edge or candor. Lo also established herself as an in-demand collaborator by working with the likes of Coldplay, Charli XCX, and Nick Jonas; as a songwriter, her credits include songs for Lorde and Icona Pop, as well as Ellie Goulding's Grammy-nominated hit "Love Me Like You Do." Tove Lo was born Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson on October 29, 1987 in a suburb of Stockholm. When she was three, her godmother gave her the nickname Tove Lo after a lynx the young Nilsson loved at the local zoo ("lo" is Swedish for lynx). She began writing poetry and short stories at a young age, and had written her first songs by the time she was 11. While growing up, she was fascinated by the rawness of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain's music and by their relationship, and also found inspiration in the work of Robyn, Lykke Li, Jeff Buckley and Charlotte Gainsbourg. She went on to study at the famous Rytmus Musikergymnasiet -- a music-oriented high school comparable to the U.K.'s BRIT School -- where she befriended Caroline Hjelt, a future member of the duo Icona Pop. After graduation in 2006 Lo began making music with other Rytmus alumni in the math-rock band Tremblebee. When the quintet broke up in 2009, Lo decided to focus on her own son