This week, MTV Iggy’s Artist of the Week competition was a rabid two-horse race between red hot electro pop princesses Iiris and Sue Cho. But in the end, only one could take home the title.

The award goes to Iiris, an Estonian electropop singer/keyboardist. She’s taken over the interweb and Estonian music channels with her litany of lush electro pop singles, which all have names like “Astronaut,” “Gummybear” and “Merman.”

Iiris (pronounced “eeris”) sings at absurdly high registers, backed by a band that toils with her on stage in Estonia. They recently opened for our favorite Latvian group Instrumenti, too.

Iiris will grace MTV Iggy’s homepage all week, with a writeup on MTVmusic.com. In the meantime, we chatted with him about Estonia, about her affinity toward cute fuzzy stuff, and how the hell her voice is that high.

Scroll down for the brand new video for “Gummybear” below!

You seem to have a lot of passionate fans voting and commenting on your behalf. How was this vote experience for you? Were you afraid that your fans would get rabid and bite people if you didn’t win?
It was exciting and it’s good to know we have such supportive fans! They seem too nice to bite any heads off though.

Is that really your voice? Like, really really? How do you DO that?
Helium, it’s all helium. Well actually it’s just in the genes (…khkhmm, helium).

What is your story? How did you get into making pop music?
I started out very young. We have a very strong choir culture here in Estonia, so I’ve been a part of three different choirs. I went through a lot of singing competitions until I was somewhat pleased with the results and didn’t see the point in competing anymore.

I have sung vocal-solos on choir albums (for children by children). At first I was more into musicals, so I’ve been in a few musicals as well, and I’ve acted in theatrical plays. I studied flute and piano at a music school and I started — trying — to write songs when I was twelve. The first real and completed one came to me when I was fifteen-years-old.

I was sixteen when I met Sethh and we started writing my debut album together. I was more of a rebel then, and he was making rock, metal, and weird stuff at the time. In the beginning we wanted to do pop-rock with some weirdness in it (for example we had a polyrhythmic pop song and a screaming trash metal song about coffee), but now we’ve evolved into this pop-electro thingy.

My partner in crime Sethh has quite a story to tell himself, he has been into almost every style I know. When he was growing up he was a big fan of dance music, mostly stuff made in Cheiron and Michael Jackson. He plays all kinds of different instruments and has worked as a studio engineer. Mad scientist he is.

What is the pop scene like in Estonia?
It’s getting more alternative lately. We have a wide range of bands of different genres, but we don’t have a lot of bands. The radios mostly play pop music that’s in Estonian.

Who would win in a fight, an Astronaut or a Merman, and why?
Depends where they’re at. If the fight takes place in the sea then a merman would kick a$$. And if in space, then a merman would die in three seconds. If the merman doesn’t have the “breathe-in-space” ability of course (or just super-powers that make him invincible). Tridents are cool though.

How did you hook up with Instrumenti? What’s it like performing with them?
I guess our manager knew them before we did. We were astonished about them when we first heard them, like: “Wow, latvians? Really?” and of course the fact that they were in panda suits (I mean, one of the cutest animals on the planet!!). They were really cool and heart-warming people, plus ultra-talented.

Between Mermen, the Astronauts, the Gummybears, and of course your affinity for Instrumenti pandas — what’s with all the fairy tales?
They just pop into songs randomly, not really my doing I think. Mostly they are some kind of subconscious symbols I guess. Besides, it’s more fun to make songs that way. I believe all songs just want to come out as they are, I guess I’m on the wavelength of fantasy songs at the moment.

Best food in Estonia?*
The sour cream here is fabulous. Kama is good too. That’s Estonian roasted meal mixture consisting of boiled, roasted and ground peas, rye, barley and wheat.

What’s next for Iiris? What are you working on, and what is your ultimate goal as a performer?
Loads of gigs and songwriting, the album has got to come out eventually. At the moment we are negotiating recording and publishing deals, working on making songs better and developing our live show (for the better).
My ultimate goal as an artist is to become exceptional at what I do.

Check out Iiris’ brand new video for her single “Gummybear.”

Iiris – Gummybear from Elina Kasesalu on Vimeo.

And watch “Davai Hawaii” live!

Iiris “DAVAI HAWAII” (Raadio 2 Aastahitt 2010 gala) from SETHH on Vimeo.

Photo Credit: Sandis Vagners