The Dead by Badlands

Swedish producer, composer, and sound designer Badlands returns with The Dead, a haunting single and video lifted from her much-anticipated fourth album Nobody Dies, released via RITE. The album is a stark, lo-fi tapestry of ballads driven by a yearning for primal, human musicality.

The Dead unfolds with quiet patience, as Catharina’s voice drifts through the wreckage of war and what lingers long after. Built from the textures of old string instruments and salvaged electronics, the track feels like a handmade artwork, like an offering of raw truth. It signals a conscious turn toward a folk-rooted sound and songwriting, rendered with clarity and emotional precision.

She says: “‘The Dead' is about human sacrifice in war and warlike circumstances, and who you are/become and what responsibility you carry as a witness to such events."

Catharina Jaunviksna’s fourth album as Badlands, distills her solo project into a blend of folk-ambient ballads. Guest appearances from Maggie Björklund (pedal steel) and folklorist Ida Mitchell (cello) deepen the album’s textures, while collage artist OSKARP blurs the visuals into fiction and memory.

Catharina explains: “‘Nobody Dies’ is about war, delusion, resilience and what it means to be human. It tells the story of a character in a broken landscape who is forced to invent and ascribe new meaning to things in order to endure existence and sow new hope.” She continues, “It’s a comment on the current state of the world and where we are heading, about deception, but also about making the best with what you got. It’s about the importance of art and human interaction, and the striving to find a way, even at times when everything seems hopeless (and even if that sometimes means delusion).”

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Badlands