After years producing Skepta and Rema, Wynd comes home to record folk music alone

Folk music has been having an unlikely cultural moment. While the genre’s most viral clips rely on minimal setups — acoustic guitar, a room with decent light, nothing more — some of the most striking work this year has emerged from an unexpected direction: from inside the industry itself. Producers and session players who spent years making everyone else’s records are stepping away from the console and making their own.

For Morten Larsen, the Danish musician releasing music as Wynd, the pivot was deliberate and deeply personal. After seven years based in London and Los Angeles — producing for artists including Skepta, Rema, Headie One, and Libianca, careers defined by scale, density, and global reach — Larsen returned to Odsherred, a quiet peninsula in Northwest Zealand, and did the opposite. He found a Tascam 424 cassette recorder on a trip to Japan, felt an immediate pull toward it, and began building a small catalog of songs in isolation: acoustic guitar, harmonica, violin, mandolin, and a vocal approach that trusts restraint over demonstration. He has named Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago as touchstones — records made against the industry grain that became, in time, widely influential.

Still from Wynd Hopeful official music video — Image: Wynd

The project found its audience without label infrastructure. Short clips posted to Instagram — raw, unhurried, filmed with minimal fuss — accumulated followers from across Europe and beyond, many drawn to the distinctive dusty warmth of the cassette recordings. Each of the singles released through 2026 built on that organic base: “Salma,” a study in longing; “Go Back,” a quieter departure; and “The Shores,” the title track, which draws on a childhood beach near his parents’ house in rural Denmark, using the tide’s pull as a metaphor for the way memory fades over time. The new single “Hopeful” — out now with an official video — shifts slightly toward alt-country, a warmer timbre, a longer horizon, and extends the emotional register of the project. Wynd was featured in SPOT Festival’s 2026 programming, a reliable signal for Nordic artists with genuine international reach, and is booked to support Axel Flóvent at Copenhagen’s Spillestedet Stengade in November.

The debut EP The Shores, four tracks recorded on the Tascam 424, releases on September 24 across digital platforms. It arrives at a moment when Nordic folk is finding its broadest listenership in years — partly algorithmic, partly generational, and partly, perhaps, a renewed appetite for music that sounds like it was made somewhere real.

Tags: indie folk, alt-country music, folk music, Morten Larsen, SPOT Festival, The Shores