Do we like them?

Do we like Aurora Aksnes?

Our score: 8 out of 10. Years of climate activism and plain words against hate, with one contested drummer episode and one divisive political stance.

Aurora Aksnes was born in Stavanger, Norway, in 1996. She made her name as a one-name pop oddity with a big voice and a love of nature. Her career took a left turn when Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers saw her Glastonbury set in 2019 and started working with her. That partnership became Tomora, whose debut album landed in April 2026.

Nothing recent has blown up around her. The record is thin on scandal: no court cases, no lawsuits and no accusations about how she treats people turned up in our searches. The one real stoush is from 2023, and it's about someone else's behaviour first.

After her Lollapalooza Brasil set in March 2023, fans accused her drummer, Sigmund Vestrheim, of making a white supremacist gesture, and a post showing a swastika was found on his account. He said he did not know the sign meant anything else and apologised to anyone offended. Aurora defended him, saying he is definitely not a supporter of those far-right views, and that she backs no ideology carrying any form of hate. A fortnight later she announced a different drummer for the Mexico shows.

On the harm check, her own words run the other way. Ahead of COP26 in 2021 she told NME “We're fighting for the wellbeing of all living things.” She also leaned on the big polluters rather than on fans, calling for change from the companies doing the real damage. Nothing we found shows her campaigning against LGBTQ+ people, women or migrants, and she was not seen working with anyone pushing harm.

The good stuff is mostly climate. She headlined a not-for-profit COP26 event in Glasgow whose proceeds were meant for Brian Eno's EarthPercent and local charities. In 2024 she played on a floating platform among Arctic icebergs with Jacob Collier, in a Greenpeace International campaign for ocean protection.

One position that splits people: in October 2025 she joined the No Music for Genocide campaign, which asks artists to pull their music from streaming in Israel, and she had criticised Israel's treatment of Greta Thunberg. Supporters see a stand against the war in Gaza. Israel rejects the genocide accusation and says its operations are lawful self-defence, so where you land depends on how you read it. It's a stand she took publicly, and we're not marking it as harm.