[Cover photo credit to Frida Marklund]

Swedish Pop artist Tove Styrke has released her fifth studio album, I thought this story wasn’t about me, alongside the official music video for album focus track “Look at me.” Her first new album in four years, the 16-track project finds Styrke moving into more experimental, introspective territory, drawing inspiration from Kraftwerk, LCD Soundsystem, Adrianne Lenker, and more.

Co-produced by Styrke, the album explores “isolation, connection and the longing for belonging” and was “made and meant to be listened to from start to finish.”

Directed by Natalie Olenheim Boija, the video for “Look at me” explores “the conflicting desire to be seen and remain invisible in a world increasingly shaped by digital perception.” Drawing inspiration from classical sculptures, its choreography “contrasts the permanence of art with the fleeting nature of human experience.”

Tove Styrke says: 

There’s an interesting tension I think between the wish to be and not be perceived in our digital world. We base so much of our value on the outside world’s perception of us, and yet that image may have nothing to do with what we experience emotionally on the inside. As humans I think we want to leave a mark, live forever. In the video for ”Look at me” we took our inspiration for the choreography from classical statues like Zeus, Venus, David etc. It became a beautiful clash I think between hard and soft, something living and something dead, the eternal and ephemeral.

The release follows a period of creative evolution over the past four years, a period that saw the artist become a mother, train as a biodynamic gardener, star in David Bowie’s Lazarus musical in Stockholm, and form the political rock band Året Var with her partner Sanna Sikborn Erixon.

These experiences helped shape I thought this story wasn’t about me, a record that finds Styrke “embracing a more personal and unfiltered approach to songwriting while pushing the boundaries of her sound.”