Anya returns to the Oktaves Podcast – Talks with Musicians for a second interview, and this one goes deep into what independent musicians rarely say out loud: songs are emotional survival, but releases are expensive, slow, and full of “grown-up” logistics.

We talk about Anya’s breakout fan-favorite “I Need Your Love”, written in 2019 during her first real experience with dating and obsession, then left unfinished until 2022. She entered it into a songwriting competition at MÍT (Icelandic College of Music) without even performing it for anyone first, and it won first place. That moment became the real birth of the song.

Anya describes her songwriting as diary entries, built to process emotions she cannot explain in plain words. She shares the stories behind key tracks: moving from the East of Iceland to Reykjavík with depression and anxiety, writing an Icelandic drum-and-bass song about one-night stands, and a breakup track built from an intense “dance it away” survival phase.

We also talk about one of her favorite unreleased songs, “Myrkfælni” (fear of the dark). It’s a drum-and-bass track about trauma work, triggers, and the moment someone becomes your light while you are still deep in your own darkness.

On the practical side, Anya explains how releasing music shifted from fully independent (handling recording, mixing, mastering, metadata, and distribution admin alone) to signing a distribution deal through a connection with Iceland Sync. That deal opened doors to radio support, Iceland Airwaves opportunities, and wider visibility. She also shares the real reason TikTok became part of her strategy: seeing direct Spotify stream lifts through a structured daily TikTok posting plan with her Icelandic disco project Krish.

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Welcome to the Oktaves podcast🎙️ Talks with musicians! Where we uplift local musicians voices.

This podcast is about chatting about and sharing with each other tips and tricks on how to succeed in the music industry as an independent musician, with an emphasis on branding and marketing, and overall management, whether your goal is to stay forever independent or get label-ready. We are very passionate about breaking the cycle of gatekeeping in the industry, so we strive towards bringing you conversations where these layers of the onion will be peeled one by one.

We are also here to uplift and shed light on independent (or previously independent) musicians in our community, who are so kind to share their struggles, their wins, successes, their strategies, and advice or some secrets possibly to how they got there.

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