Get To Know: RIVER

RIVER began as a protective persona. With forthcoming debut album A dying source, the Swedish artist is turning that armour inside out, using music, film and visual art to move closer to herself.

RIVER began as somewhere to hide.

Not necessarily from the outside world, but from the limitations that can come with being entirely yourself. The Swedish artist first created RIVER as a persona: a little distance between herself and the things she wanted to say, somewhere she could exaggerate, take risks and step outside the version of herself people already knew.

Over time, that distance has started to disappear.

RIVER is a universe I created to give myself space to play freely with my musical and visual expression. It started as a protective persona that allowed me to step out of my shell, and over time, it has evolved into something much closer to who I am today.

That evolution now sits at the centre of RIVER’s forthcoming debut album, A dying source, due 13 November 2026. What began as armour has gradually become somewhere she can be much more exposed.

It’s a place where I can share personal stories, but also use visual exaggeration and self-irony to poke fun at the ego, vanity, and sexuality. Playing with those elements gives me the freedom to dive into deep emotions without taking myself too seriously.

The instinct to step outside herself has existed beyond RIVER too.

Growing up in Gothenburg, spending time in Mexico and eventually returning to Sweden placed her in environments where the expectations attached to an older version of herself could temporarily disappear.

Travelling and stepping into new environments has been essential for me, mainly because being in a new city allows you to temporarily step out of your old skin and be a new person without anyone judging you by your past.

Gothenburg remains home to RIVER’s roots and core memories, but familiarity also carried its own limitations.

Gothenburg is where my roots and core memories are, but it was also a place where I felt limited by old patterns, codependency, and the fear of taking up space. Leaving for places like Mexico gave me the anonymity and freedom I needed to break out of that box.

That same instinct sits behind RIVER. From the beginning, this was never intended to exist as music with an aesthetic attached afterwards. Songs, imagery, styling, collage and film belong to the same creative space.

Yes, I definitely thought of it as an entire universe from the beginning. Creating RIVER was a way to build a persona that allowed me to create fearlessly and break free from my own limitations.

What she hadn’t necessarily expected was how personally involved she would become in creating each part of it.

As I started working on the music, I also began playing around with images that built on those stories. I didn't realize at first that I would be so hands-on with that side of things, like directing and editing my own videos, but it just happened naturally.

In those early stages, understanding what RIVER looked like became part of understanding what RIVER actually was.

Photography: John Scarisbrick

I really needed that space to explore without anyone else telling me what my visual expression should look like, especially in the beginning when I was still discovering it for myself. Whether I'm making paper collages or working on a video, the visual world always comes from the exact same emotional state as the music.

That approach explains some of the more exaggerated and uncomfortable imagery surrounding this chapter. RIVER isn’t interested in making something cinematic simply because it looks good. The image has to carry whatever feeling produced the music in the first place.

It comes down to following my intention. I’m not trying to create something that just looks polished or cinematic for the sake of it, it’s always about serving a specific emotion.

With RIVER directing, editing and creating much of the visual material herself, there is little separation between the original idea and what eventually appears on screen.

Since I direct, edit, and create the visual pieces myself, the imagery naturally carries my own raw expression rather than trying to fit a classic mold.

A visual concept rarely arrives as a completely separate stage once a track is finished. More often, images start appearing while the music itself is still taking shape.

The images usually start appearing as the music takes shape, but it's always the emotional state that leads the way. I don’t sit down to plan out a specific story or visual beforehand. I just let the emotion dictate where the song is going, and the visuals usually follow that feeling naturally.

The relationship between City of thirst and Change gives that process its clearest example so far.

Rather than existing as two disconnected videos, they occupy the same 24-hour period. City of thirst captures the dreamy high; Change deals with the crash waiting on the other side.

As I was writing the storyboard for the City of thirst video, I thought in the end of the dreamy high that the video captures there will be a crash.

Rather than bringing that collapse fully into the first film, RIVER wanted City of thirst to stay suspended in the dream, with only the suggestion that something might be about to go wrong.

But I wanted City to just be an endless dream with a very subtle feeling that something might go wrong in the end. And Change tells that story. So we shot the TV material in the music video for Change at the same time as we shot City of thirst.

City of thirst artwork

The visual side of RIVER remains as personal to her as the music itself.

For me the visual aspect is just as close to my heart as the musical part. I really enjoy creating the visual stories such as the music videos and I usually have a clear idea of what I want it to look like.

RIVER directs and handles post-production across her videos, but the wider process isn’t completely solitary.

I also have a close team that I’m comfortable working with that helps me bring my visions to life.

With A dying source, that freedom is being used to reveal more rather than hide behind another version of herself.

The album isn’t connected simply because its songs were written during the same chapter. For RIVER, the thread running between them is transformation: becoming increasingly honest with herself, facing uncomfortable feelings and accepting the tension that exists between opposing emotional states.

What ties them together is the core feeling of transformation and stepping into complete honesty with myself, facing uncomfortable emotions and learning to sit in the friction between light and darkness.

There is continuity in the sound too. Years spent working alongside producers Johannes Henriksson, Rickard Andersson and August Vinberg, as well as the musicians surrounding the project, have given the record something recognisable beneath those shifting emotions.

But sonically, it’s also tied together by the atmosphere built over many years with my producers Johannes Henriksson, Rickard Andersson, and August Vinberg, as well as the core group of musicians involved. There’s so much heart and quality in the instrumentation, and that shared craft gives the whole album a continuous red thread.

The biggest change, though, comes from what RIVER now allows the project to hold.

Her first EP existed at a point where the persona and the person behind it were far easier to separate.

On my first EP, I was fully immersed in the RIVER persona almost like playing a character: it was lighter and leaned more mainstream.

That character gave her permission to create without the same fear that had previously restricted her. By the time of A dying source, she no longer needs quite as much distance.

But now, RIVER has become a space that gives me the confidence and room to express my whole self. It has allowed me to be more raw, both lyrically, sonically, and visually, rather than just acting out a persona.

RIVER is no longer simply the character through which she can say something. Increasingly, it is where she feels comfortable saying it as herself.

That is also why A dying source matters to her as an album rather than simply a collection of individual singles.

I really hope people take the time to listen to the album as a whole. The singles were made to be part of a bigger story, and there's a red thread connecting all the songs together.

After years spent developing that story through recorded music and visuals, the album could also reconnect RIVER with the part of herself that existed before the persona.

Since I started out as a live artist, this record feels like reconnecting with those roots, and I hope it gives me the chance to bring this music to the stage with the incredible musicians who made it with me.

RIVER began as a character that allowed its creator to step outside herself. It gave her somewhere to experiment, take up space and express things with a degree of separation between the artist and the person underneath.

A dying source brings that distance closer than it has ever been.

The persona that once gave RIVER somewhere to hide has gradually become the place where she feels able to show more of herself.