Rykka

Rykka, originally named Christina Maria Rieder, was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. At the age of 15, they began taking guitar lessons and started performing at local community festivals. While attending Vancouver Community College for a two-year program, Christina also studied voice under Paula Kremer and frequently played music on the streets of Granville Island in Vancouver.

In 2009, they relocated to Toronto to record their third independent album called “Straight Line” under the stage name “Christina Maria.” This album was produced with the assistance of Canadian producers David Baxter, Russel Broom, and Ryan Guldemond from Mother Mother.

The album “Straight Line” was released in Switzerland by Little Jig Records in 2010. Rykka stayed in Switzerland and Germany, performing at various venues and even appearing on the popular German television channel “Sat.1 Frühstücksfernsehen,” which has an average viewership of 1 million people. They were also nominated for the Demotape Clinic at M4Music in Switzerland.

In 2012, Rykka released their album “Kodiak,” which marked a significant shift in their musical career as they formally changed their stage name from Christina Maria to Rykka. The record was produced by Ryan Guldemond of Mother Mother, engineered by Shawn Penner, mixed by Warne Livesey, and mastered by Andy VanDette. It was released in Switzerland by Little Jig Records.

Their fourth studio album, also titled “Kodiak,” was released in Canada in 2013 under Vissen Record, following its release in Switzerland the previous year. In the same year, Rykka won $100,000 in BC’s Peak Performance Project.

Rykka had the opportunity to perform at BC’s well-known Squamish Valley Music Festival in 2014, opening for We Are the City, who were also winners of the Peak Performance Project. In 2016, they represented Switzerland in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song “The Last of Our Kind,” which they co-wrote with Jeff Dawson, Mike James, and Warne Livesey. Unfortunately, they placed last in the second semifinal of Eurovision 2016.

The follow up of the Eurovision song was “Bad Boy”, which came out on 8 July 2016. On 4 November, their album “Beatitudes” was released. It was followed by a tour through both Canada and Switzerland. In January 2017 a video for the song “Runnin’ away” was released. In November another one, “Youth is wasted” was released. Rykka also participated in several songwriting sessions. 

Since 2018 Rykka formed a duo, Goldschatz, together with Timothy Jaromir. Their first single “Thick as theives” was released on 28 September of that year.

Rykka performed with Goldschatz mainly in Switzerland. After the COVID19 lockdowns, Rykka released a new song on 26 March 2021: “Dreams/Death”. In November of the same year they released a follow up, “Louder”. In the same month, Goldschatz released a Christmas EP. It was also the year that they came out as bisexual and non binary, using the pronouns they and them.

Rykka launched a project, where she announced being an astronaut artist going to Mars. The project was called Olympus Mons and contained videos, put online in September 2022.