Fever Ray Announces Radical Romantics, First New Album in 5 Years

Karin Dreijer reckons with “the myth of love” on Radical Romantics, their first new album as Fever Ray since 2017’s Plunge. Ahead of the album’s March 10, 2023, release via Mute, the artist has shared a visualizer for “Carbon Dioxide,” the bold lead single co-produced by experimental artist and producer Vessel.

Dreijer completed their most recent Fever Ray tour in 2018 and started on their new album in fall 2019, working in the Stockholm studio they built alongside brother and fellow The Knife member Olof Dreijer. Olof lent a hand on Radical Romantics starting in mid-2020, co-producing and co-writing album opener “What They Call Us,” released last month, as well as three other tracks—the first time the siblings had produced and written music together in eight years. As if that weren’t exciting enough, other co-producers and contributors to the album include Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails), Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia, Johannes Berglund, Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik’s dance project Aasthma, and the aforementioned Vessel.

On Radical Romantics as a whole, Fever Ray “presents their struggle with love, or to be precise, the myth of love,” per a press release. “Carbon Dioxide” foregrounds its allure: A bouncy, abundant electro-pop jam flecked with harpsichord, keys and strings, the track’s beat bumps and its synths dazzle, while Fever Ray and Vessel explicitly connect all that musical ebullience to the exhilaration of infatuation. “Can’t say it out loud, I’m afraid to lose it / The melody is pure music,” Dreijer’s layered voices croon over bass pulse, adding with both fear and joy in the choruses, “Holding my heart.”

“I just think that the direction could be nice, happy, full of everything, extra everything,” Dreijer told Vessel while creating the track. “‘Carbon Dioxide,’ a compound which, being defined by its bond with oxygen, seems to me like a neat chemical expression of the essential compassion that the conditions for life on our planet depend,” says Vessel. “Compassion and joy; happiness guarded from sentimentality by the absurd and the grotesque; the extra-everything of unconstrained Nature.”

Watch the “Carbon Dioxide” visualizer (and revisit “What They Call Us”) below, and find the details of Radical Romantics further down.

Radical Romantics Tracklist:
01. What They Call Us
02. Shiver
03 New Utensils
04. Kandy
05. Even It Out
06. Looking for a Ghost
07. Carbon Dioxide
08. North
09. Tapping Fingers
10. Bottom of the Ocean

Radical Romantics Art: