The crazy world of Nina Persson

SAN FRANCISCO — Few artists have made better use of their down time than Swedish chanteuse Nina Persson.

While her band the Cardigans is taking a brief break, she has modeled for H&M print ads, sung a duet with RZA and appeared on the new Dangermouse/Sparklehouse project “Dark Night of the Soul.”

She also made her acting debut in the film “Om Gud Vill.”

With her side band A Camp, she issued the sophomore album “Colonia” as well as a new covers EP featuring Bowie’s “Boys Keep Swinging” and Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them.”

Any remaining hours have been spent with husband/A Camp partner Nathan Larson, building a hi-tech home studio in their
Harlem brownstone.

But that’s not all, says the workaholic, who brings A Camp to San Francisco on Sunday.

“There’s another thing I did that’s also quite random — about a year ago, I worked as a creative director for a department store called Pub in Stockholm,” she says. “So I was doing set design for them and buying vintage clothes, and I had my own little vintage section within the store. And we did all the display windows, which were really strange.”

They were so surreal, they caused a national stir.

On the art-poppy “Colonia,” Persson includes controversial cuts such as “Stronger Than Jesus,” but the mannequins she and a girlfriend positioned were something else entirely.

“We were very influenced by Simon Doonan, the former creative director for Barney’s in New York,” says the singer, 34.

“So we designed one window — which got quite publicized — like a laboratory, with this crazy scientist dissecting a naked woman, with jars of formaldehyde with women’s heads inside. Then we put up a toy railroad in the ceiling, with a camera-carrying electric train that filmed the scientist and broadcast it on a screen.”

Persson was aiming for Peter Greenaway grotesque. She missed.

“People got really upset and said we were being very demeaning to women,” she says. “And even though we’re rabid feminists, we had to defend ourselves. They wanted us to go on talk shows, but instead we wrote one public letter to a newspaper explaining what our idea was.”

A second play-money-strewn window fared worse. She was nearly arrested for counterfeiting. To please the Swedish National Bank, she says,“We had to flip every single bill over to show the other side — we solved it that way.”

The Cardigan soon left the store. “And I was very glad to get out of there,” she says. “And now I feel that music is really what my profession is. Making records and touring — that’s what I can handle!”

IF YOU GO

A Camp

Where: The Independent, 628 Divisadero St., San Francisco
When: 8 p.m. Sunday
Tickets: $17
Contact: www.ticketweb.com