Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit to play Adelphi

What do you do when you're in a touring folk group but half of you are too young to be served in a pub?

While most touring bands would retire to the bar after, and probably before, each gig to indulge in a reinvigorating beverage or two, how do underage, rising stars fill the long nights billeted in Travel Lodges or bunked on the tour bus?

In the case of Swedish sisters Klara, 16, and Johanna Söderberg, 19, aka acclaimed folk outfit First Aid Kit, the answer is simple. Boggle.

"We play a lot of boggle on tour," says younger sibling Klara in her deliberate Stockholm accent. "We became Boggle experts on our last tour. We played Boggle every night – nobody could beat us – we were Boggle geniuses by the end of the shows."

"But now I think we're tired of Boggle," butts in older sister Johanna. "I think on our tour of England we will be looking for a new game. We've tried to buy Cluedo but we can't find it anywhere in Sweden."

Anyone with a spare copy of the murder mystery board game will be able to hand it to the sisters in person when they arrive at Hull's Adelphi on Friday, February 26, as part of a 15-date UK tour.

The tour comes hot on the heels of this week's release of their debut album, The Big Black And The Blue, which has been hailed by critics as possessing a maturity and songwriting talent well beyond the sisters' years.

Its stripped back, Appalachian folk-inspired earthiness and haunting melodies lead the NME to say the Swedes "possess voices that make you crumple into a heap of ruptured-soul hopelessness" while The Sun proclaimed the band as "the hottest act of 2010".

Others have ventured this is what England's own gold-selling Mumford & Sons would sound like – had they been Swedish teenagers. And girls.

Klara and Johanna's cover of Fleet Foxes' Tiger Mountain Peasant Song has proved a certified YouTube sensation – so far amassing more than a million plays – but it's their own compositions, including the exquisite Hard Believer and emotive In The Morning, that has set them up as talents to look out for.

But how did a pair of teenagers hailing from a country best known for the power pop of Abba, Roxette and Europe become so steeped in, and polished practioners of, American backwoods folk?

Growing up in the southern Stockholm suburb of Enskede, the girls say there was hardly a thriving folk scene.

"It is very different in Sweden to how it is in England," says Klara, whose articulateness belies her age.

"You have Noah And The Whale, Mumford and Cherbourg there, all of which we love, but we don't have any of that here. That's why we're looking forward to coming back to England – because it has so much great music.

"What changed our lives was a record by Bright Eyes," adds Johanna, referring to the American singing songwriter Conor Oberst's indie folksters.

"A friend of mine said 'you should really listen to this'. I did and it really changed our lives. My sister listened to it, too, and we knew that was what we wanted to do. That started us writing songs. Now we just want to play them to as many people as possible."

First Aid Kit play The Adelphi, in De Grey Street, Hull, on Friday, February 26, at 8pm. Tickets cost £6. For more information call (01482) 348216.