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Sep 09, 2025 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Joel Ståhl

While recording as Badlands, Swedish singer/songwriter and composer Catharina Jaunviksna operates in soaring expanses, incorporating both lush, layered synth soundscapes and warm analog production touches. Badlands has carved this space for herself over a trio of albums, returning most recently with her 2022 album, Call to Love, the follow-up to her 2021 sophomore effort, Djinn.

This year, Badlands has been sharing a string of new singles while teasing towards her fourth full-length project and introducing a raw, windswept new sound. Last month, she announced the forthcoming album, Nobody Dies, due out on October 10th. She describes the record as a metafictional collection of post-apocalyptic folk and lo-fi balladry, crafting a sprawling sound palette from scraps of old string instruments and ambient electronic flourishes while retaining the expansive scale of her songwriting. Today, Badlands is back with her latest single, “Faint Birds,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Faint Birds” is a comparatively stripped-back detour for Badlands. Rather than filling the track’s negative space with swirling instrumental layers, she lets her melodies stretch and sprawl above echoing percussion and droning tones. Strings, pedal steel, and rumbling bass drums slowly seep into the mix, building higher in a subtle crescendo until the instrumentation hits its apex in the song’s final moments. The resulting slow-burn is initially spacious and washed out before transmuting into sweeping and dramatic new forms.

At moments, it can feel like the numb blankness that accompanies a devastating loss before the full weight of tragedy hits, bringing forth a meditative element that the lyrics mirror. Badlands explains of the track, “‘Faint Birds’ is about being numb and washed-out; a state where our person can only hear and register subtle details, like the faint birds over the sea, in the distance. But despite this detachment, the song is still indicating a longing for something. Like a quiet prayer for renewal, to be able to feel again.”

Check out the song and accompanying lyric video below. Nobody Dies is out everywhere on October 10th.