SPIN: Li’s new album, Wounded Rhymes, is equal parts seething ice princess and lonely snowwoman, vacillating almost track by track between fury and despondence over a scotched relationship. “Unrequited Love,” a sort of Spector-ish torch song, with its lightly strummed guitar and girl-group shoowop-shoowas, is one of the year’s saddest, prettiest moments. And then on follow-up “Get Some,” for which Yttling imports heaving tribal drums, Li is back on the prowl, tenaciously conflating herself with a prostitute as she writhes all over the track. The dual objectives — weep for me, fear me — collide throughout, creating a dicey, but gripping album. So much for the cutie-pie routine. MORE
LOS ANGELES TIMES: There are femme fatales, and then there’s the character the Swedish singer Lykke Li is playing in her demented Spector-pop single “Get Some.” “Like a shotgun needs an outcome, I’m your prostitute — you’re gonna get some,” she warns in a glassy, deadpan coo. Rarely has a come-on come packed with so much menace. But Li’s beguiling second album “Wounded Rhymes” is full of charged contradictions. She’s a mediocre singer with a very interesting voice, a fan of classic handmade pop and the ways laptops can serrate it, and a writer obsessed with sex and with sexing up obsession. MORE
LYKKE LI PLAYS THE TLA TONITE WITH THE GRIMES. THE SHOW IS SOLD OUT.