Listen: Still Parade – Actors (NIVA Remix) [Premiere]

Few debut cuts have lit up the web in 2013 quite like Still Parade’s ‘Actors’. Ambling out of the blue with shady electronica woven through classical songwriting in the vein of Crosby, Stills and Nash, the enigmatic outfit – we still have no idea who they are, or where they’re from – floored all who came across their delicate, divine sound.

Their debut album, a reported three years in the making, shows little sign of surfacing anytime soon but we’re buoyed by the arrival of this lush official reworking of ‘Actors’ from Stockholm’s Prince of Dream-pop, NIVA.

The track’s organic texture is retained, despite NIVA paring back the brusque fingerpicked guitars, through softly brushed found sound percussion and twinkling idiophones. The vocals are slathered in reverb and a wash of white noise, affording them a paler otherworldly quality in contrast to the loving, lump-in-throat Justin Vernon-style originals. And you thought this elusive project couldn’t get anymore enchanting.