Photo Diary: Lil Halima teases her For The Dark Days EP with pics from the Norwegian winter

The full EP is out February 22nd, but it's first taste - the soft and shimmering Hold Me - is out now.

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One of my personal favourite international discoveries of this year came in the form of Lil Halima, a Norwegian electro-R&B queen-on-the-rise who with her single Train last year, offered us a warm hug of emotive, but catchy R&B. "Only her third major single under the name, Train is a light-hearted and playful pop-R&B single that mixes together Lil Halima's almost FKA Twigs-like vocal (except maybe a little more upbeat and accessible than the cult English musician) with a bubbly, sample-filled production that pulses with this electronic twist," we said at the single's release. "It's a brilliant track that simply demands your attention." In the time since, she's kept our attention and defied our early expectations, with the shimmering single Jasmine and her debut EP love songs for bad lovers, a seven-track release that continued to showcase Halima's soothing vocal and glistening melodies.

Now, she's back, bounding towards a big year ahead with two EP releases planned for 2019, the first - For The Dark Days - arriving on February 22nd. Hold Me is the three-track EP's first taste and it's a more brooding and emotive cut than much of her accessible radio-R&B, bringing together an intricate production rich with delicate piano chords along with her soft vocal, which gently sways alongside the melodies. It almost sounds like the love child of a gentle James Blake production and FKA Twigs' quirky but heartstring-pulling glow, offering something that may "seem like a very dark song," in her words. "In many ways what I’m trying to say is that nothing is wrong with me, I just need a hand to hold on to and in this case, it should’ve been my own."

The EP is inspired by the Norwegian winter - long, dark and relentless - and ahead of its release, we got Lil Halima to give us a bit of insight into the EP and its feature single in the form of a photo gallery, which gives us a glimpse at what she's been up to while also teasing what's bound to be a great release. Dive it into it all below.

Lil Halima - For The Dark Days Gallery:

06. 01. 2019.

Me and my friend Sara (stillchai) went to Copenhagen to shoot a music video with Elias Boussinia, since I'm featuring on a song on his new EP. Sara is one of my closest friends, she is such a great photographer, and comes with me to take photos at times. Our first meeting with Denmark was being hungry and meeting drunk Danish people at Burger King. I thought drunk Norwegians were annoying, but man.

We got like two seconds to see Copenhagen as well, and go to a few vintage stores. It was rly pretty. The next day we went to shoot the music video.

We spent the entire day at the shoot. As we were shooting, I was panicking a little bit because I was in the middle of directing my own video, by myself. And looking at what everyone there was doing, made me realize how much work it actually is. But honestly, it went so well.