Blooming softly into her new era of artistry, Emma Elisabeth’s latest track is a musingly introspective fragment of her complex thoughts.

Hailing from Sweden, Emma Elisabeth lives, walks, breathes and sings her heritage in the most captivating way. Now Berlin-based, Emma embodies the liberating and spirited seventies era and she channels this infectious energy, as well as a contrastingly melancholic mood, into her stunningly crafted indie songs. Growing up, Emma was surrounded by instruments, participated in multiple bands and majored in vocal studies at Kulturama, the prestigious Nordic school of aesthetic education in Stockholm. Following her education, Emma set her sights on the world – travelling it and making music across it. Refining her craft, she has created music in London, Paris and the USA, toured Japan with one of her bands and performed at the legendary SXSW festival. It doesn’t matter where in the world she is, Emma is eternally inspired to create.

Emma’s sheer strength lies in her courageous reliving of her darkest times, which occurs when she channels the emotions into her towering indie tracks. Describing her musical vulnerability as “difficult” but “like therapy”, Emma’s upcoming third album Some Kind Of Paradise is set to embody this cathartic release of songwriting.

Accompanied by charming visuals, Tray Full Of Ash is the first single from this LP and is an initially gratifying taste of Emma Elisabeth’s forthcoming musical era. With impassioned vocals on a bed of gentle percussion and smooth guitars, this track showcases Emma’s poetic songwriting through ethereal lyricism such as “touch me like a ghost, linger in my bones.”

Emma shares:

Emotional time warps and ghosts. The lyrics deal with holding on to the past for too long, so much that it prevents living in the present. How people from the past turn into “ghosts” in my own head and heart because I can’t let go, turning into nothing but dust and old memories. And this feeling of both wanting to let go and hold on while trying to break out of an emotional time warp. It’s haunting and at the same time hopeful, and somehow both embraces the melancholy and shines a light on the way out of it. When I recorded the vocals for ‘Tray Full of Ash’, in my mind I was in some abandoned chalet with dust flying in the air. (Reality check, I was actually in my tiny Berlin apartment during lockdown, trying to get the cat to not be loud during takes..) And I had this 80s flea market-painting on the wall with the faces of a woman and a cat floating in a pink sky with the wind in their hair, which was VERY inspiring at the moment. In the production I wanted to give it a classic open and dreamlike sound with pads, keys and guitar. And the drums and bass give it a running feeling, to contrast all the floaty stuff on top, which all came together with the help of my collaborators and band mates.

Collectively created by Damian John Harper and Emma Elisabeth, the vintage-esque music video for Tray Full Of Ash is a cinematically exquisite accompaniment to this mesmerising track.