Koala Bar Transform Self-Doubt into Hope with New Album

Swedish indie rockers, Koala Bar, are on the verge of their third album, Ingest ≈ Digest, as they release their latest single “The Carnival”. Combining folk, pop, and alternative influences like Fleet Foxes, Phoebe Bridgers, and Marcus Mumford, it’s a song that shows off a hopeful drive that transforms from its origins in self-doubt.

The band describes the album’s inner working concept as “some feeling of alienation and (. . .) of not really fitting into this strange world of ours”, later gained a more positive perspective, “As much as it’s an album about doubt and inadequacy it’s also about the solidarity and hope that unites us”.

This rollercoaster of emotions that pours out from the album feels like it comes to a head with “The Carnival” which features an aloof playfulness that swells into an expansive unknown with more confidence than it starts with. Using the titular spectrum of ingest to digest, there’s something to be said about what it means to process something in way that is transformative. Koala Bar makes the distinction that consuming for the sake of consuming is entirely missing the point. We take things in so that we may be changed by them – hopefully for the better – and, musically, they capture that quite well.

“The Carnival” and Ingest ≈ Digest are both available now on major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Find this and more excellent music on the Alchemical Records Multigenere Mixture playlist on Spotify.