Tina Dico sings and plays wistful songs on her guitar. She’s very big in her native Denmark.
Intrigued? Yeah, neither was I.
But listen to Dico perform her song “Use Me” and see if you feel differently. With a tobaccoey voice and simple but intimate delivery, she draws you in with lyrics that bring a little complexity to otherwise basic emotional pretenses: “Don’t be so hard on yourself/Take it out on someone else/Say my name any way you please/Use me.”
“Use Me” appears on In the Red, which is Dico’s third album but her first U.S. release. If things don’t pan out, she has a backup: She also has a gig with the mellow English electronica band Zero 7. (No, she’s not the one who sings that song from the Garden State soundtrack. She sang on the tracks “Home” and “The Space Between” on a later album, When It Falls.) But it’s clear from her music that Dico, who counts Bob Dylan among her influences, is not necessarily interested in becoming the next big thing in electronica.
Dico is 27, blond and pretty. But unlike many blond pop singers in their 20s, she’s actually relatable. She seems uninterested in pretense, either with her image or her music. For God’s sake, the poor thing looks like she might actually break down crying in the press kit video, as she talks about how lonely it has been moving to London, and then touring around the world.