An interview with Lowly on self-producing Softy, arriving October 30 via Bella Union.

Transmission 438: Interview with Lowly

Danish quintet Lowly return with their fourth studio album, Softy, out October 30 via Bella Union. Self-produced for the first time, the record leans on the same trust that brought the band into a room together over a decade ago, turning parenthood, codependency, and the quiet toll of loving someone at their limit into ten tracks of expansive dreampop.

Title: Softy
Artist: Lowly
Release Date: 2026-10-30
Genres: Dream Pop, Indie Pop
Label: Bella Union
Description: Lowly's Soffie Viemose discusses self-producing their fourth album Softy, codependency, parenthood, and ten years of band trust on Bella Union.

The title track, out now with its video, distills that spirit: tenderness as its own form of resilience. We spoke to Soffie Viemose about the making of the album.

What were some of your earliest musical influences?

Celine Dion, Toni Braxton, Ace of Base.

You formed Lowly over a decade ago. What is still recognizable from those early sessions in the band you are today?

The harmonic structures, the beats often going against what you’d expect the song to do, noise in quiet places, heartstabbing lyrics and layered vocals.

Did these themes of parenthood and loss emerge naturally, or did you set out to write about them?

They emerged naturally. We’ve always written about the things that are closest to us, and that has been a theme throughout our time as a band. 

You describe “Softy” as both a love song and an admission of wanting more. Did the melody or the lyrical tension come first? 

Nanna wrote the lyrics on top of a sparse demo Kasper had done, and then we recorded the song in the studio with the full band, and suddenly the lyrics needed a different expression, and Nanna rewrote the lyrics to fit that. So it was a very iterativ process.   

Did the idea of devouring loved ones’ emotional reserves come from personal experience? 

Yes. Indeed. Some of our lyrics are about parenthood, but a lot of the lyrics are also about being in a codependent relationship with someone. Sometimes one carries more than the other, or needs the other one more, and there is a beauty in accepting that and letting go of the thought of always being equal, but there’s also a lot of ambivalence and that is good writing material. 

What was hardest about self-producing for the first time? 

It wasn’t hard. Well maybe all the carrying and setting up gear.  To have a producer can feel like having a parent ensuring that what you are doing is alright. This time we needed to trust each other. I don’t think that was a hard thing to do, but I am excited/anxious to see if we were right. 

Has the current state of the world changed the stories you feel compelled to tell?

Yes, it has. However, I am under no illusion that we are changing any of the things we are writing about. We are all white, cisgender people living in Denmark, with free healthcare, a year of parental leave, and no immediate threat of war or religious persecution, so in a way we are also emotional spectators to these human catastrophes. That leaves us in a safe position, but also in a state of impotence, and perhaps that is where the feeling of being compelled comes from. Perhaps writing about it is a way of not feeling completely passive.

Any artists or thinkers outside music who shaped this album? 

While we were away recording the album I was reading a book of poetry by the author Caroline Albertine Minor called Nivå Bugt Strandenge. We wrote Tilted because we had a little too much time on our hands one morning and recorded it in the afternoon, and some of her imagery definitely dripped into the lyrics. 

Why did “Softy” end up giving the album its name?

We like the idea of meeting the hard world with softness and we are all proud softies, so the title felt very representative. 

What are your plans for the near future?

Playing the songs we wrote to people! Writing new music maybe.

Photos courtesy of © Lowly

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others