This dual heritage has deeply influenced her aesthetics. She speaks Mandarin with her mother and often incorporates Chinese musical elements into her jazz framework. Her 2021 song “Above the Chinese Restaurant” is a poignant, nostalgic look at her childhood, where she would practice violin while her grandmother cooked in the kitchen of their family-run Chinese restaurant in Reykjavík. While her roots are in Iceland and China, her career was forged in the United States.

When you listen to her music—the melancholy of Icelandic winters, the warmth of a Chinese grandmother’s kitchen, the sophistication of a Boston conservatory—you are hearing all of those places at once.

But as her star rises, one question keeps popping up in search bars and comment sections: Where is Laufey from?