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"  Even if you haven&amp;#039;t heard of Scandinavian sensation Ida (pronounced ee-dah) Maria, there&amp;#039;s a good chance you know her irresistible single &amp;quot;Oh My God&amp;quot; from this season&amp;#039;s Gossip Girl promos. The Norwegian singer, whose catchy hit &amp;quot;I Like You So Much Better When You&amp;#039;re Naked&amp;quot; reached No. 13 on the UK charts, brings her buoyant melodies stateside this spring, touring with Scottish quartet Glasvegas and releasing her debut album, Fortress Round My Heart, April 14. We talked to her about cultural similarities, onstage mishaps, and the importance of finding the perfect dress. What&amp;#039;s the Norwegian music scene like?  It&amp;#039;s exploding right now. It&amp;#039;s definitely in its golden age. It&amp;#039;s very experimental and collaborative and creative. Norwegians don&amp;#039;t spend too much time on the surface; it&amp;#039;s more about authenticity. People are working a lot across genres. For example, metal bands collaborate with electronic people or classically educated people or even pop musicians, which I think is a very healthy thing. What&amp;#039;s the response to your music been like in Europe compared with the U.S.?  I haven&amp;#039;t played so much on continent of Europe; I&amp;#039;ve mostly toured in Scandinavia and England. In a way, I think I&amp;#039;m communicating better with Americans because Norwegians and Americans are quite similar. Where I&amp;#039;m from, people are very outspoken, and I find the same thing in America. You can walk on the street and some people just come up to you and start talking.  What&amp;#039;s been your favorite live show?  I&amp;#039;ve enjoyed playing in extreme and exotic places, like the north of Norway\u2014places where there&amp;#039;s a lot of beautiful nature. We once played for 70,000 people at a big Norwegian celebration.  You performed at the Perez Hilton party at SXSW. How&amp;#039;d that go?  I got to meet Perez and he was very nice. It was cool to be in Texas. The best part of the concert was that there were so many cool girls on the same stage. What other female musicians are you into?   Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, Ladyhawke, Bj\u00F6rk, PJ Harvey, Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday, Anni Rossi. Was &amp;quot;I Like You So Much Better When You&amp;#039;re Naked&amp;quot; written for someone in particular?  It was written for all the guys in the universe. My grandma inspired me to make that song, because she&amp;#039;s a very outspoken woman. She&amp;#039;s not ashamed to proclaim that she loves the naked male body in whatever shape and form. There&amp;#039;s so much focus on the female body that I wanted to turn it around and say that we are watching the guys, and I wanted to do it in a silly way.  Your music is very energetic. How do you psych yourself up before a show?  My favorite part of the day is when we go onstage, so it doesn&amp;#039;t take much. But it helps to put on some nice clothes and a little bit of lipstick. How would you describe your onstage style?  I&amp;#039;m a big fan of glitter and glam. I have a golden flapper dress that I bought in a stripper store in Los Angeles. It was a bit too naked for me, so I had more fabric added, because I&amp;#039;m actually a shy person. But I drove past the store and was like, &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s the one! That&amp;#039;s the place where I&amp;#039;m going to get my favorite dress.&amp;quot; I only wear it on special occasions, like the Perez Hilton show. I think it fits in the United States, but I don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;d wear it onstage in Norway. I hear you&amp;#039;ve sustained some injuries while performing.   I broke my ribs\u2014that was probably the worst. At a show for Swedish booking agents, I tried to do a backward somersault without ever having done it before. We never got a gig in Sweden after that. What was your recording process like for the album?  We recorded it while we were on tour, while I had broken ribs and was feeling sorry for myself. We recorded it in four different cities in Europe, and so we just did a couple songs here and a couple there and it wasn&amp;#039;t very structured. It just happened until we had enough songs to fill an album and then we released it.  What are your biggest nonmusical influences?  Bill Hicks, Charles Bukowski, the movie Scarface. What are your plans after this?  I&amp;#039;m going to the West Coast for Coachella, and then I&amp;#039;m going to play on Jay Leno and Carson Daly. I&amp;#039;m really looking forward to sunshine. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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