Endlessly uplifting, gorgeous sunshine art-pop from Swedish librarian cum insanely talented multi-instrumentalist Sternpost. Who said the underground had to be glum??

Sternpost’s 2023 hit Ulrika felt like something of an awakening, an open door to a vivid and unbelievably lush sound world that was totally at odds with its humble home-recorded nature. Back on Portland outpost Concentric Circles, unworld.afterpop takes our hand again and guides us into a dreamworld of charming avant-pop, drawing influence from Prefab Sprout’s cinematic epic ‘I Trawl The Megahertz’ alongside Brazilian author Clarice Lispector’s seminal consciousness stream Aqua Viva with added Rob Wyatt, Art Bears and Aksak Maboul thrown in for good measure.

Underpinned by gloriously sumptious melodies and bewilderingly ambitious song-structures, the whole thing unspools like a warm-breeze, meandering between radiant bossa-pop to elegant avant-jazz lavishly imbued with pinpoint attention to detail. Sometimes it’s simple, music should occasionally just make you feel good - which this does in abundance. A joy it is to witness such talent and humility in equal measure with irrefutably catchy songs that’ll stick like glue.