Album: Fever Ray, Fever Ray (Rabid/V2)

In the eerie video for Fever Ray’s debut single “If I Had A Heart”, Karin Dreijer Andersson’s face appears only briefly.

That it’s painted to resemble a skull will come as a surprise only to those unfamiliar with her previous work as half of Swedish brother-sister duo The Knife.

Even beyond the gothic imagery and glacial electronics, this mesmeric solo project shares much with The Knife’s last album Silent Shout – the surreal lyrics and Robyn-meets-Ryuichi Sakamoto production of “Seven”, or weird vocal treatments which pitch Andersson’s voice down to a baleful masculine groan on “Concrete Walls”, conjuring a sonic landscape as magical as it is mysterious.