The Norwegian singer who likes boys better when they’re naked is coming to Massachusetts and you’re getting a chance to check her out here! Ida Maria has just announced a slate of tour dates throughout the summer headlining at clubs around the U.S. Blast has one pair of tickets to her show on June 10 in Waltham for a lucky winner. E-mail us as soon as you finish reading this for your chance to win!

TO ENTER:

Email us at Giveaways@BlastMagazine.com with your wildest naked moment story. Entries must be less than 200 words and applicants must be 21-years old and older. Contest ends June 8, winners will be contacted and announced on June 9. Good luck!

Ida Maria US Tour Dates:

June 10 Waltham, MA Skellig

June 11 Providence, RI Jerky’s

June 12 New York, NY Hiro Ballroom

June 14 Brooklyn, NY Bell House

June 15 Philly, PA North Star Bar

June 16 Ann Arbor, MI Necto

June 19 Kansas City, MO The Backyard at Beaumont

June 22 Tulsa, OK Cain’s Smallroom

June 24 Phoenix, AZ Martini Ranch

June 29 San Diego, CA Casbah

Don’t forget to check out “I like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” and other Ida Maria songs on iTunes.

We’re sitting in the dark in a trailer outside of Boston’s Paradise Rock Club. The electricity is out in the trailer and the rest of the band is talking very quietly in the front while we conduct the interview in the back. Without even looking for a bottle opener, Ida Maria grabs a water bottle and uses it to pop the cap off her Sam Adams.

She continues telling me how she got started on the path to her first record, “Fortress Round My Heart,” without pausing to acknowledge she had just opened a beer bottle in one off the most innovative ways I had ever seen: “So I had this show booked and I didn’t have a band, I just had a bunch of songs. [...] I went back to Stockholm and was like looking for musicians everywhere. So I found these guys in Stockholm, basically. [...] I told these guys it was just going to be one gig, so that’s why they said yes, but we’ve been on tour for three years.”

Ida Maria (pronounced Ee-da) made a splash on the American music scene far before she physically walked onto its shores. Her song “Keep Me Warm” was featured in the season four finale of “Grey’s Anatomy” (“Grey’s” fans out there will recognize the song from when Derek found Meredith standing outside his camper) and she recently had a big interview with Rolling Stone.

The Norwegian artist waited three years to tour in the States, but said the wait was well worth it.

“It’s like the difference between reading a book and experiencing it, because I had a very certain frame of mind of how the States were before I came here, and when I came here that all changed,” Maria said. “I’m very surprised at how open and including and positive and social Americans are. [My experience with] Americans have mostly been tourists that come into tourists shops, that are talking really loud and are acting very “American.” Everything’s big and everything’s loud and everything. But I just have a totally different view of it now. I love to be here.”

Dressed in an oversized red flannel shirt, maroon leggings and short black boots, Ida Maria took the stage at the Paradise Rock Club March 31 opening for Glasvegas, her opening joke about Italians and the Boston mob met with silence. But the second she opened up her mouth and began to sing, the audience was held in rapture by her haunting voice, especially during her song “Stella,” a song she introduced as being about “love, religion and prostitutes.”

Everything came together when Maria played her hit single, “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked.” Those unfamiliar with Maria would have missed the shared smiles between the band members when the opening chords resonated through the venue, but the second Maria screamed “I won’t mind if you take off all your clothes/Come on, take them off/’Cause I like you so much better when you’re naked,” people were dancing along and bobbing their heads; singing along as if they knew the words even though they’d never heard the song before.

“I just wrote that song because I thought somebody needed to write it. It’s like, it’s so obvious,” Maria said. “It’s fun for me to tour and sing to people every night that I would like to see them more if they were naked.”

Though no one at the Paradise took the song literally, Maria said she had experiences where so many shirts were thrown on the stage there was a “mountain” around her, and once in Dublin when a guy skipped his clothes, went straight for his shoes and threw them at her face.

“But I love it when the guys start taking off their clothes. That’s just fucking amazing. That’s the whole point of the song, you know? The point isn’t that the girls are going to get undressed, it’s that the guys are going to show their… you know,” Maria said.

On Jan. 21, it was announced that Maria had won a Norwegian Grammy for “Best Newcomer of the Year.” Maria performed “Naked” at the ceremony but had a surprise from the award presenters after her performance.

“These two most famous TV presenters came walking out totally naked on live television. Their [genitals were covered ] but I didn’t know they were going to come out naked. It was weird. Some guy sued the TV stations because of that and stuff,” Maria said. “I’m just happy someone finally took [the song] literally.”

Maria will continue to tour in the US on the West coast throughout April, though she said she has started writing music for a potential sophomore album. She said the music will cover “strange topics” very different from “Fortress Round My Heart.” “I’m not even sure if I want to make another record,” she said. “We’ll see.”

Citing influence from Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Lou Reed, Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, Maria said her music is more American than British or Scandinavian.

“As a European we get a lot of culture from the States: TV, films, and music, and we’ve all grown up watching American shows and American films and listening to American artists,” she said. “But if I look at my record collections, it’s definitely more American bands than English or French.”

Maria’s signature sound is very throaty vocals with occasional pops and cracks, which ends up sounding like a toned down version of her screaming. She said the band started out rehearsing in a small venue with no mics set up so she had to scream to hear herself over the drums, bass and guitar. “When I first did shows with the full band and stuff, I just continued singing like that, so it’s a bit of a coincidence or something,” she said.

The last song of her set at the Paradise, “Oh My God,” is definitely a screamer. Even after the last strums of guitar had faded away, Maria kept yelling “Oh my god!/Oh my god!/ Oh my god!” into the microphone, but by that point in the show, the audience was completely engrossed in her performance. After she left the stage, the man sitting next to me who was there to see Glasvegas said he was in awe. He had never heard of Ida Maria before but had thought she was fantastic.

When asked what she thought set her apart from the rest of the musicians out there, Maria said, “They say I’m different. I don’t know.”

Maybe a little bit of “different” is exactly what the American music industry needs right now.

Blast reporter‚ Christine Cassis gives her top 10 list of music that is going to hit it big in 2009.

1. Ida Maria

Ida Maria Borli Sivertsen is a Norwegian rocker whose smash hits “OhMyGod” and “Stella” have propelled her to sold out shows, a performance at the Glastonbury Festival, and a nomination for Best Rock/Indie Artists at the BT Digital Music Awards in 2008. Her catchy punk and alternative rock tunes will cross the pond with her January tour. Stops include U.S. appearances in L.A., Hollywood, and New York. The self-proclaimed Queen of the World’s latest single, “Better When You’re Naked” has nearly 730,000 plays on MySpace.

2. VV Brown

2009 just might be the year for foreign artists crossing over into the States’ music scene, which would explain the popularity London-based VV Brown has had with her hit single “Crying Blood.” The British artist, who was born to Caribbean parents, chose to follow her passion for music instead of attending top-notch universities such as Oxford, saying she refuses to be a “puppet of institutionalized intelligence.” The established song-writer had written top ten hits under the alias name Geeki for artists like The Pussy Cat Dolls and British pop sensation The Sugababes. VV Brown’s debut album “Traveling Like The Light” is scheduled for a May 2009 release after “Crying Blood” has left fans thirsting for more. VV Brown was nominated for the BBC’s Sound of 2009 award alongside acts like Lady Gaga and Kid Cudi. Adele was the recipient of the award in 2008.

3. Meiko

This Georgia-native singer/songwriter climbed her way to a number 35 spot on iTunes Top 100 Albums chart in 2007 without the help of a record label. In 2008, Meiko signed a deal with MySpace Records/DGC to release an album in partnership with her own indie label, Lucky Ear. She’s performed at Sundance Film Festival where Paste Magazine editor Josh Jackson declared her a “big success story” waiting to happen. Since then, her music has rocked L.A. radio stations’ playlists and the tunes have been a regular on primetime television hit series like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “One Tree Hill.” Meiko has toured with prominent female artists of her genre such as Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles, and her success has gained herself a spot at SXSW. In 2009 she will tour with Joshua Radin performing her number one iTunes folk song “Boys with Girlfriends.” Soon, you won’t be able to get her out of your head.

4. Britney Spears

As the reigning princess of pop celebrates her ten-year anniversary on the scene, it will be hard to escape her in 2009. With the highly anticipated “come back tour” and her newly released album, “The Circus Starring Britney Spears,” taking the country by storm this March, Spears’ is sure to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Whether she is successful or fails at her comeback world tour, this pop tart is sure to have you hooked with her always-catchy-choruses and feel-good dance beats.

5.‚  Kevin Rudolph

It seems anything Lil’ Wayne touches turns to gold, and Kevin Rudolf is no exception to that. The American singer/song-writer and record producer’s debut single “Let It Rock” reached the number five spot on the Billboard Hot 100 late in 2008 with the help of his rapper friend, Lil’ Wayne. Not much is known about Rudolf, other than a laundry list of artists he’s work with as either a producer, writer, or guitarist (Timbaland, Black Eyed Peas, Justin Timberlake, The Neptunes, to name a few), including what he looks like; he is barely visible in the music video for his first single and his MySpace hosts only photos of a Rudolf sporting oversized shades. But, the mystery seems to work in his favor; Rudolf is continuing to rock his way into 2009, and with the network of big-name hit makers this guy’s got up his sleeve, longevity should be a piece of cake.