The impossibly hard to Google Forest are recent signings to Service Records, home to the likes of Jens Lekman and The Tough Alliance. If you think that’s going to prepare you for another slice of classic Nordic pop music, think again – this Swedish trio have forgone the classic song craft of Lekman and the electronic pop of The Tough Alliance, to produce a self-titled debut record of barely-there beauty.

The band’s bio says “From the snowy John Bauer forests just under the polar circle, the sounds of someone, or something, making sounds of loneliness on dew-covered harps of spider web.” This is a good starting point for describing the band’s music; if you’ve ever seen the artwork of John Bauer – a mix of ethereal Princesses and otherworldly trolls, fairytale forests and natural marvels – it fits with the music of Forest. There’s a fragile beauty at work in these songs, and that sound you can faintly hear is my heart quietly breaking to the opening duo of tracks on Forest, ‘Out In the Streets’, and ‘Just One Day’. The former is an incredibly sad song, led with organ drone, programmed drums and a high-pitched vocal layered with reverb; the latter a hopeful and insistent tune, punctuated surprisingly with some terrific melodica.

‘I Like Your Dreaming’ calls to mind 1980s British synth music, OMD perhaps, if they were on downers, and it floats along beautifully. ‘Vivienne’ is an aching ballad – like all songs named after women, probably – which rides along on a series of “ba ba ba’s” before reaching another unexpected melodica breakdown. Again, the mix of analogue and digital seems to work – much like how this predominantly electronic music manages to maintain a connection to nature through its innocence and intimacy. Although records which have a connection to nature tend to make you think of acoustic guitars, Nick Drake and folk music, Forest’s approach appears equally valid.

‘We Can Go Away’ brings a smile to the face, simply because the seaside organ charm of it makes me think it would fit in perfectly on BBC Radio 2’s Nigel Ogden’s The Organist Entertains show, while instrumental ‘In the Forest’ would be how Beach House might sound if they had been raised in Northern Europe, all woozy and off-kilter melodies.

Actually, “woozy and off-kilter” is the perfect way to describe the vocals on the record. There’s an innocent and romantic tone to their one-take feel – think the vocals of Naomi Yang on some Galaxie 500 records (despite them being mainly male vocals), and you’re there – which befits the sound of Forest as a whole. Everything hangs together well, and the album, at eighttracks long, has a consistency that really adds to the enjoyment. Final track ‘Always Your Love’ is as downbeat as the opening track, lending the record a circular feel that seems to be a natural process.

John Bauer said “the forest constantly feeds the imagination”; it creates a dream world we have within us, carries us away to some other place and time. This is what Forest might do for you – if some albums can be classed as “headphone” albums, this is certainly one. You might start listening in your home, or out on the street, but be careful – you may find yourself transported to that world near the polar circle. Lovely stuff.