Ber

Ber is the stage name of Berit Dybing, an American indie pop singer-songwriter from Bemidji, Minnesota. Born in 1998, she grows up in Walker, Minnesota and has Norwegian heritage. Her given name is of Scandinavian origin, and the nickname “Ber” is the name used by friends and family.

Early life and training

Dybing takes music, guitar and piano lessons as a child with support from her parents. She graduates from Bemidji High School in Bemidji in 2016. While in high school, she listens mainly to folk music and indie pop, including Mumford & Sons and The Lumineers, rather than radio pop.

After school, she takes a gap year and joins a programme at Trøndertun Folk High School in Trondheim, where she focuses on jazz and forms a folk band with three other students. She later moves to the UK to study vocal performance at Leeds Conservatoire, alongside one of her bandmates and her then boyfriend, and completes her final semester via Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic. She graduates in 2020 and returns to Minnesota in December 2020 after her visa expires.

Recording career

Ber releases her first song, “Bad For Me”, in April 2021, followed later that year by “Feels So Easy”. These songs, together with four others, form her debut EP, And I’m Still Thinking About That, which appears in 2022. She releases her second EP, Halfway, in 2023 through AWAL Recordings Ltd.

Halfway contains six songs, including “Boys Who Kiss You in Their Car” and “Your Internet Sucks”. The EP is centred on trying unsuccessfully to get over a man who ghosts her.

Live performance

In March 2022, Ber performs at South by Southwest.