If you’re not getting excited for Capital Pride, you must not have read this week’s Metro Weekly, which includes a cover interview with Icona Pop. The Swedish duo of redhead Caroline Hjelt and black-haired Aino Jawo will no doubt fire up the crowd performing current Billboard Top 10 hit “I Love It.” As discussed in the feature, the song has become a sensation in large part because of a pivotal scene in the HBO series Girls.
Certainly, there will be more love on hand than the duo got on a recent trip to the land of amore. “We went to Italy a couple of months ago, just for fun,” Hjelt shares. “We were just walking around with all of our ‘Icona Pop’ bags. People thought we were pretty cocky and weird.” No wonder: “Icona Pop” means “pop icon” in Italian. During a 30-minute interview the ladies came across as both sweet and smart, and also confident and ambitious — but those are hardly the same things as cocky and weird.
Among Icona Pop’s ambitions, or at least dreams, expressed to Metro Weekly: Collaborations with Prince, Tina Turner, Patti Smith and Asap Rocky. None of those artists, as far as we know, will appear on the duo’s debut album, due out later this year. “We can’t really tell you which people we’re [working with now]. We don’t want to jinx it,” says Jawo. “But we have some tricks up our sleeves.”
More immediately, Hjelt and Jawo are looking forward to a late summer headlining tourthrough North America — though no date in D.C., at least not yet — during which they’ll be able to play longer sets than on previous gigs opening for Marina and the Diamonds and Passion Pit.
But first up, after a performance at Governors Ball this Saturday, June 8, in New York, is the Capital Pride Festival. Hjelt says, “we’re very honored.”
“We’re expecting a lot of dancing, good movements,” adds Jawo. “And love.”
Owners of several D.C. LGBTQ bars and nightclubs say the federal takeover of the cityās police force -- and the surge of federal agents stationed on 14th Street NW and along the U Street corridor -- cost them thousands of dollars in lost business this past weekend.
Mark Rutstein, co-owner of Crush Dance Bar at 14th and U Streets NW, told CBS affiliate WUSA that August 15 was the worst Friday the bar has seen since opening last year. He estimated losses to be approximately $15,000 for the night.
Rutstein told The Advocate that Crush sat near a multi-agency checkpoint, including agents from the Department of Homeland Security, set up on Wednesday evening. Authorities reportedly made 45 arrests, 29 of them immigration-related.
California Democrat says House Oversight Chair James Comer made a "homophobic" remark after Democrats challenged his handling of the Epstein investigation.
U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, fired back at Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) after Comer dismissed him as a "real big drama queen."
Comer's jab came after Democrats released a sexually suggestive letter allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender who died in jail while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
The letter, featuring a drawing of a curvaceous woman used as the backdrop for birthday wishes, was allegedly signed by Donald Trump and included in a 2003 album celebrating Epstein's 50th birthday. Trump had been friendly with Epstein during the 1980s and 1990s.
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