Norway’s Kine Hjeldnes first came to our attention with the outstanding double-hit of the Feathers/ Morpheus split single last year. And her new single shows that her talent for dramatic art-pop is still intact. Cruel operates in slightly different territory to that double-single though – it moves away from their heavy musical darkness and into sparkling synth-pop. Cruel is a song that’s all about time and air – occasionally the drums and synths tumble in time with Hjeldnes’ vocal. At other times they pull back, and yield the spotlight to her soft, silvery voice. Wrap it all together, and Cruel‘s a peppy pop song with real emotional weight: as any track with the line ‘tell me how I can mend your heart – I don’t think I could mend something that hard’ will be. You can listen on Soundcloud now – and it’s out officially on Friday.