Music has a unique ability to suggest images without ever showing them. Småland turns that attribute into an entire artistic method. If there is no film to soundtrack, they simply invent one themselves. The band’s debut album “Ljudspårsmusik Vol.1” functioned as an imagined score to Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland. Whether the newly released “Oro och Ältande” soundtracks an equally fictional film remains unclear, but it certainly feels that way at times. The album also marks the trio’s first release on Pomperipossa Records, founded by Anna von Hausswolff. Despite consisting of musicians deeply rooted in synth-based music — Dag Rosenqvist, Christian Hutchinson Berg from Kite and Thobias Eidevald from Domus and formerly Agent Side Grinder — Småland creates music that feels strikingly organic. Moving somewhere between folk-synth, lo-fi ambient and instrumental pop, acoustic instruments like harmonium and piano are blended with electronic textures, grainy pads, noise and bubbling synth arpeggios. The result is warm, atmospheric and quietly transportive, music that unfolds less like traditional songs and more like scenes, memories or fragments from films that may never have existed at all. This summer, Stay Out West gets to witness the film that is Småland.