Leyya

 
U.D. Festival
Ljubljana (SI)
(c) Gabriel Hyden

The Austrian bands rise happened surprisingly and quick. It started with their very first release at the end of 2014, „Drowning In Youth“, that made waves among the austrian scene first. It was followed by „Wolves“ and an EP, before „Superego“ eventually made them a recognizable name way outside their home, too. The track is currently standing at  4 Million Plays on Spotify and > 750.000 on Youtube, got support and was applauded by a number of prominent Radio DJs such as Huw Stephens on BBC Radio 1, Lauren Laverne on BBC6 and John Kennedy on XFMs Xposure. It went Top 3 on Germans College Radio Charts, gained airplay all across Europe and was featured in several Advertisement Campaigns. In 2016, the track and amazing video „Butter“ followed directly in Superegos footsteps.

During 2016 and 2017 LEYYA established themselves as a great live band at industry events and festivals at Reeperbahn Festival (Hamburg, DE), Eurosonic Festival (Groningen, NL), The Great Escape (Brighton, UK), Liverpool Sound City (Liverpool, UK), Tallinn Music Week (Tallinn, EE) and MaMa Event (Paris, FR), Electronic Beats, Primavera Sound, Sziget and Iceland Airwaves – and finally headlined Popfest (Vienna, AT) back home, where they played a crowd of 20.000 in front of the famous Karlskirche in Viennas beautiful City Centre.

In 2017 they also won the Radio FM4 Award at the Amadeus Austrian Music Awards, their natives prime music prize. „Zoo“ (2017) was the kick-off to a new-era that mounted into the release of their sophomore album „Sauna“ in January 2018. The albums colourful, quirky sound was met with highest praise from the press, including journalistic heavyweights TIME Magazine and Der Spiegel. Singles like „Drumsolo“, „Oh Wow“ and „Heat“ got significant airplay across the globe. The duo went on to win another Amadeus Austrian Music Award in 2018  („Best Alternative“), supported Arcade Fire at their Vienna Stadthalle show and played a tour of 20+ countries including Mexico and the US and festivals like Fiberfib Benicássim, Dockville and SXSW in Austin. In Summer 2018, just a few months after the album release, Leyya released, „Wannabe“, that went on to win the UK Music Video Award that year.

Taking a break, Marco and Sophie followed individual paths to produce film music, some major hit records and helped giving birth to new exciting projects (Oehl, Sharktank, My Ugly Clementine). By fall 2020, the time was right to sum up what they and the world have been through and Leyya released „The Paper“.