Swedish darkwave / post-punk project Darkplace will release its new single “Älvdans” digitally on 6 February 2026 as the third and final preview of the upcoming album “About Nordic Folklore,” due 6 March 2026 via Icons Creating Evil Art.

“Älvdans” follows the 2025 single “Näcken” and the January 2026 single “Maran,” completing a triptych of tracks built around Nordic mythological beings that also structure the nine-song album “About Nordic Folklore”.

Where earlier singles focused on paralysis and nocturnal terror, “Älvdans” centres on movement and compulsion. As the artist summarises, “Where Maran embodies paralysis and nocturnal terror, Älvdans represents movement — the unseen force that lures the body forward.”

Folklore theme and sound of ‘Älvdans’

“Älvdans” draws on the Scandinavian myth of siren-like beings who appear dancing on fog-covered meadows at night, luring onlookers into a trance that ends in madness or death. Musically, the track pushes Darkplace further from overt electronics into a folky, almost baroque darkwave palette.

Darkplace notes that the composition grew from ambience outward: “I began by trying to capture what a foggy meadow would sound like,” with the track then building toward a chorus “entirely about the dance.” The arrangement introduces drums gradually, with the first chorus entering as if footsteps emerge from fog, reinforcing the narrative of dancers slowly joining the sirens’ circle.

Below is the beautiful video teaser for the single.

“About Nordic Folklore” is scheduled for digital release on 6 March 2026 and is currently available for pre-order as a digital album on Bandcamp, including immediate access to three advance tracks and the full album upon release.

About Darkplace

Darkplace is an anonymous music and art project based in Stockholm (Sweden), presenting itself as a multi-disciplinary entity where music, digital painting and animation form a unified conceptual output. The art-driven project is rooted in post-punk but drawing on experimental rock, alt-pop, shoegaze and related genres.

Darkplace first appeared publicly in early 2023 with the single “Arken Över Hesselby,” a track and video set in an alternate version of the Hässelby suburb, accompanied by animated digital paintings. Subsequent 2023 singles “Fearmonger,” “Cars” and “This Is Loud” expanded a narrative set in a bleak, alternate Stockholm, each supported by videos built from multi-layered digital artwork involving photography, 3D sculpting, oil-style digital painting and animation.

The debut full-length “About The End Of The World” was released digitally on 27 October 2023 via Icons Creating Evil Art, with a concept linking all eleven tracks to an unfolding, visually documented storyline across the Stockholm suburbs.

The 2025 single “Näcken” marked a shift from dystopian urban narratives to Nordic folklore, introducing the second album “About Nordic Folklore” and its focus on mythological beings.

“Maran” and now “Älvdans” continue this direction with material centred on suffocating nocturnal spirits and trance-like siren dances respectively.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

side-line.com

Darkplace, a fresh Swedish band known for its dark dream pop/post-punk sound, is set to launch their first album “About The End Of The World” on October 27th. This concept album is deeply influenced by the grim scenery of Stockholm’s suburbs. Telling a story set in an alternate reality, the album is gradually being revealed through a series of videos that each correspond to a track on the album. These videos are based on animated digital paintings.

Previously, Darkplace released “Arken över Hesselby” (The Ark Over Hesselby). The music video presents a city’s outskirts plagued by an unexplained presence in the sky. This was followed by “Fearmonger”, depicting an end-of-world scene with wailing sirens and a lone soldier running from a mysterious floating airship, often referred to as the ‘eye in the sky’.

The band’s third single and video from the upcoming album, “Cars”, has just been released. “Cars”, which includes vocals for the first time, continues the narrative with a man travelling northward, guided by mysterious highway signs that only become visible in his car’s headlight beams.

Most tracks on the debut album are short instrumentals composed to match specific storylines. The band stated that the artwork was mostly created before the music, leading the tracks to be written like soundtracks for the animations. They explained their creative process: “We paint over photos using oil paintbrushes. It’s a layered, messy process. Exporting is even more complex because we strive for depth in our scenes, which requires layered depths during export. Some scenes are animated frame by frame, making the project nearly two years in the making.”

Here’s the video.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

side-line.com

“Arken Över Hesselby” is the debut single by the Swedish dark dream pop/post-punk act Darkplace. It’s the first track from their debut album out October 2023 via Icons Creating Evil Art.

The debut album will be a conceptual debut album inspired by the bleak landscape of the Stockholm suburbs that birthed them. The album will be unveiled gradually over the coming months via a series of imaginative visuals based on animated digital paintings for each of its eleven tracks, commencing with the first single “Arken Över Hesselby” (“The Ark Over Hesselby”).

Rooted in late 80s/early 90s indie styles, Darkplace incorporates a variety of other genres into their sound.

Here’s the video for the first single.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

side-line.com