Already an award-winning star in her native Sweden, Sara Parkman has been making waves internationally over the past few years, bringing her extraordinary Funeral Folk project – a collaboration with composer Maria W Horn – to experimental music festivals like Supersonic in the UK and Rewire in The Netherlands.

Now she’s back with new single “Svarta tråden” (translation: "The Black Thread"), the first track to emerge from her as-yet-unannounced fourth solo album, to be released through her own Supertraditional label.

Watch the video directed by Martin Falck below:

Says Parkman in a press release:

‘“Svarta tråden” is about sacrifice, about something having to die for life to begin. About always living with death too close for comfort. The song is a ticking swarm of pedal organ, strings and creeping vocals that comfortingly land in a choir.”

“It’s so terribly difficult to write about death without either becoming banal, trauma-ridden, or too private,” she explains (in Swedish) in a Substack post, adding: 

“To tackle this, I write through ancient images of death: the sacrificial lamb, the agnus dei, the textiles of death, friends and hearts. In these image fabrics, I embroidered my own memories of death, because they are recurring (always too often) and return just like the black thread. When you’re in it, it feels so unfair, it stings, why can’t anything ever be completely good, the fetus, the child, the dream, love, everything dies. And it's just a matter of accepting even though it feels so unfair.”

Sara Parkman is also heading out on tour in Europe this spring and beyond. Check those dates below:

03/26 Jena, DE @ Trafo
03/27 Berlin, DE @ Galiläakirche
03/28 Duisburg, DE @ Kulturkirche Liebfrauen
05/09 Stockholm, SE @ Förbindelsehallen
05/26 Barcelona, ES @ Casa Montjuïc
05/27 Brussels, BE @ Les Nuits Botanique
10/10 Stockholm, SE @ Kungsbacka Teater

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