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Jul 08, 2022 By Caleb Campbell

Next month, rising Icelandic alt pop singer/songwriter Máni Orrason is set to share his forthcoming third full-length album, The World is Big and You Will Never Find Me. The record finds Orrason reckoning with his personal past and his artistic future, exploring anxious musings with a punk-tinged anthemic grandiosity.

As he explains, “So much of the album is me trying to hide in public or run away or something; the spectrum of genres and sound is so fast, somehow. It feels cohesive now, but while I was making it, it felt really insane. That was why it was tough to find a title for it, because it felt so vast.”

Ahead of the record’s release, Orrason has shared a string of new singles this year, “Coffin,” “Death By Head,” and “Just Can’t Have It All.” Today, he’s back with another new single, “Dreama,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Dreama” finds Orrason leaning further into the soaring melodrama that undergirds his music. The track sports one of the biggest choruses on the record, with both an anthemic hook and an arena-sized delivery from Orrason, bolstered by towering percussion and blocks of synth chords. In contrast, the lyrics explore a more insular story, with Orrason wrestling with the lingering pains from past scars and attempting to make peace with himself. The accompanying videoーdirected by Andjani Autumn Gatzweiler with director of photography Ivarr Jacobsenーpersonifies this struggle as Orrason attempting to bury his past self.

Speaking about the song, Orrason says, “It’s basically about reckoning with the past and trying to let go of it. It ended up being very anthemic in a Killers kind of way which I love. Melodrama and big feelings. So much of the album is really introverted and self-contained so it feels good to really address an audience and yell, “BIG DREAMA, STOP SAYING YOU’RE FINE” repeatedly. The video is a bit insane. It’s me carrying a dead body that I carry on this journey and then bury. It was fun taking the idea of the song to such an extreme. I loved making it with Jani and Ivarr.

“My Dad said to me the other week, ‘Máni, you need to move forward, no matter what happens to you in life, you have to keep going and not bury your head in the sand’, and I think that’s true,” he continues. “With the storyline of the album, that’s kind of sad and confused and desperate and whatever, it’s still grand and confident despite all the shit I sing about. I wear this on my sleeve, and I mean it.”

Check out the song and video below. The World is Big and You Will Never Find Me is out August 29th via Groenland Records.