Ruins

Ruins is the fourth studio album by Swedish indie folk duo First Aid Kit. The album was produced by Tucker Martine and features contributions of R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, Wilco's Glenn Kotche and Midlake's McKenzie Smith. The album was released on 19 January 2018. The lead single "It's a Shame" was released on 28 September 2017. After First Aid Kit broke through internationally with their cover of the song "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" by Fleet Foxes in 2008 the duo released three albums in six years. In an interview Klara Söderberg said: "We started touring in 2009, and between playing and recording, we never had a break. By 2015, I was kind of spent. I had a hard time expressing, let alone understanding how exhausted I was until I couldn’t do it anymore." Her sister Johanna has had a similar experience and said in the same interview: "It just came to us in different ways, having breakdowns, crying on stage, feeling it was too much ... We decided together we needed a break, and it was really hard for me to do that. I got restless and struggled with the down time, but we both needed that space. We didn’t speak for months. We had to have a divorce before we could write music again."