With “Hey Solo,” Siri Karlsson return to a collaboration that has grown steadily over two decades, reconnecting with Solo Dja Kabaco, one of Burkina Faso’s most respected griot artists. What began as a live and studio partnership during the Ouaga Sessions in 2018 is now rekindled in a new single that speaks directly to their long-distance artistic dialogue. The track opens, fittingly, with the sound of a real phone call—Sweden to Burkina Faso—bridging geography, memory, and music.

Siri Karlsson, the duo of Maria Arnqvist and Cecilia Österholm, are known for reshaping the landscape of Swedish folk with a palette that spans analog synths, saxophone, nyckelharpa, and voice. Their work consistently leans into the unfamiliar, blending traditional Nordic instrumentation with avant-garde composition, psych textures and theatrical live performances. From early records like Mellan Träden (2008) through to Horror Vacui (2019), they’ve drawn from both historical forms and future-facing experimentation, never settling into one sound for long.

On “Hey Solo,” that restlessness meets the rooted, deeply rhythmic style of Solo Dja Kabaco, whose griot lineage informs both his lyrical delivery and percussive sensibility. His contributions anchor the piece with a grounded West African energy, while Siri Karlsson shape the surrounding structure with airy synths, modal harmonies and shifting folk patterns. The result is a meeting of parallel traditions rich in symbolism, repetition, and improvisation.

There’s a deliberate looseness to the arrangement: voice and instrumentation ebb and return without a rigid grid, allowing the groove to feel lived in rather than programmed. It’s a dynamic conversation between two musical vocabularies that have evolved in dialogue.

You can stream and listen to the single HERE