Fever Ray has released their long-awaited third studio album, Radical Romantics.

Fever Ray is the solo project of Karin Dreijer, who, alongside their brother Olof Dreijer previously formed The Knife, one of the 2000s’ most musically inventive, critically acclaimed acts. As Fever Ray, however, Dreijer broadens and deepens the shape-shifting electronic pop of their former group, allowing them to explore different identities – and their meanings – even more fully through their distinctive music and imagery.

In the world of Radical Romantics, Fever Ray presents their struggle with love, or, to be precise, the myth of love. Following on from 2017’s acclaimed Plunge, in which they delivered frequently thrilling manifestos on queerness, politics and desire, Radical Romantics instead speaks to matters more directly of the heart and the head, the dancefloor and the bedroom. Dreijer is one of pop’s true visionaries, and in their hands, crude and familiar clay is twisted into endlessly beautiful and terrible forms that balance strength with vulnerability, anxiety with safety.

Working in the Stockholm studios built with their brother, Dreijer first started work on Radical Romantics in the fall of 2019; sometime in mid-2020, Olof joined them in working on the project, co-producing and co-writing four out of the record’s ten tracks, representing the first time the siblings have produced and written music together since the release of The Knife’s third and final LP, 2013’s Shaking The Habitual. Other co-producers and performers include Trent Reznor and Atticus Rose, Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia, Peder Mannerfelt, experimental London artist Vessel and more. Long-time collaborator Martin Falck joins Dreijer in creating the encompassing visual world of Radical Romantics-era Fever Ray.

Romantic love: hackneyed pop song subject; star of its own full genre of films and subset of reality shows; a key preoccupation of philosophers and tale-spinners down the centuries. Wars have been fought for it, and all religions are concerned with it. It’s in the everyday fabric of all of our lives, whether we’re starry-eyed over a blooming relationship, making things work over years of growth and change, going down in flames, mourning the past, or hoping someone might fill our empty beds. It’s all of the above Dreijer wants to examine with Radical Romantics.

Release: March 10th, 2023, Rabid Records/[PIAS]