Mikko Joensuu shares the cracked country beauty of "Warning Sign"

With a voice which wobbles unsteadily, recalling Roger McGuinn of The Byrds, Joensuu immediately exposes a vulnerability in his music, a crack into which seeps doubt, loneliness and a questioning of higher powers.

The Finn is preparing to release his debut album Amen 1, and the numeral is not just an indication of being his first full length. It's the first in a trilogy of releases which will make up an incredibly ambitious three-part debut album; Amen 1 comes in June, part two later in the year and the final some time in 2017. Joensuu explains that while recording in a cabin by a lake in Northern Finland he discovered that "what I had was actually three different albums, all stemming from the same state of mind, expressing various sides to the same story. From the three, Amen 1 is perhaps the most fragile. It’s an effort to find balance between great sadness and beauty, and to understand the very strange state when one’s mind is close to collapse and yet at the same time more alive than ever."

"Warning Sign" starts with pedal steel, the sound of sadness in a musical instrument, and Joensuu's wavering rumble of a classic country vocal joins, posing himself the question "how come every time I see a warning sign / I just pass on through?" Alongside plaintive piano, a choir joins in the chorus and strings swoop in sumptuous fashion, the obvious nod would appear to be towards the grandiose fragility of Josh T Pearson, someone also well acquainted with behaviour which they are doomed to repeat.

A stark monochrome video hammers home the message in uncompromising fashion, showing Joensuu undergoing a series of physical penitences of blood, fire and ice in a solitary confinement. It's a viscerally gorgeous image for a song full of cracked and parched beauty.

Amen 1 will be out 10 June via Svart Records, and you can listen to - and watch - "Warning Sign" below.