Kristín Anna is an Icelandic musician and performing artist.
Classically trained on piano, she began her musical career in her teens with the band múm and released with the band its first three albums. She toured extensively with múm from 1999-2006 singing and played accordion, saw, banjo, bass and various keys. In 2006 she left the band and moved to New York where she appeared solo for the first time as Kría Brekkan performing a bundle of piano songs she had composed herself. Moving back to Reykjavík in 2009 her output became more of a performance art and she eventually enrolled at the Iceland Academy of Art.
From 2003-2009 Kristín Anna was a member of the Icelandic band Stórsveit Nix Noltes. In these years the band releases two albums and toured Europe and the United States. In these years she also performed and recorded music with various other groups and artists such as Animal Collective, Mice Parade, Slowblow, Skúli Sverrisson and S.LÁ.T.U.R.
Kristín Anna has worked extensively with her friend the artist Ragnar Kjartansson, appearing in many of his most recognised art pieces and installations. Most notably she plays accordion and guitar in his acclaimed nine channel video installation The Visitors (2012). She performed in his video works World Light - The Life and Death of an Artist (2014-2015), Scenes from Western Culture (2015) and composed the music for and played piano in the live performance Schmerz (2022). She also performed and co-wrote the music in Kjartansson installation Sumarnótt / Death Is Elsewhere (2019) that premiered at The MET in New York City along with her twin sister Gyða and the twin brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner of the American rock band The National.
In 2015 Ragnar Kjartansson encouraged Kristín Anna to record the bulk of piano songs she had written over the last decade. Friend and former Sigur Rós member, Kjartan Sveinsson recorded the songs with her over a period of two years, and the album, titled I Must Be The Devil, was released on Kjartansson label Bel-Air Glamour under Kristín Anna's own name in spring 2019. The album won “best album” in its category at the Icelandic Music Awards as well as the best album cover.
Previously Kristín Anna had released on Bel-Air Glamour her experimental all vocal improv-album that she created in art residency in California's desert titled HOWL and in 2018 she released her album Lay Me Down with 37d03d.
In 2021 Kristín Anna made her first film score for A Letter from Helga by director Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir. The film is based on a celebrated Icelandic novel and the score centers around the piano with many additional instruments conveying big canvases of emotions. The work was awarded Best Filmscore at the Montreal Film Festival in 2023, the music was released by Sono Luminus in july 2026.
Over the last decade Kristín Anna has performed her music at several music and art festivals such as PEOPLE festival in Berlin, Eaux Claires Art and Music Festival in Wisconsin, MusicNOW in Cincinnati, Big Ears in Knoxville, All Tomorrow Parties in the UK and Iceland and the Icelandic music festivals Iceland Airwaves, Extreme Chill, Cycles and Norður og Niður. She can regularly be seen performing at the MENGI artist run space in Reykjavik, Iceland.
In recent years Kristín Anna has been teaching music, performance art and piano playing in an elementary school in Iceland, where she lives and raises her daughter.
