The thing about Namasenda is that she’s never really trying to be likable. “Bad Love,” the new single from her forthcoming debut album Limbo, doesn’t exactly invite you in. It pulls you into something already in motion, a techno-adjacent pulse with enough synthetic grit to feel physically present, and then drops a chorus so plain-spoken in its self-awareness that it lands harder than it should: she knows it’s bad. She keeps doing it anyway.

That’s the whole premise, and it works because Namasenda doesn’t editorialize. She’s not asking you to feel sympathy or contempt. The song moves forward the way feelings about toxic situations actually move, which is to say sideways, in circles, with occasional bursts of clarity that change nothing. The production keeps pace with that mood. It doesn’t resolve. The synths layer up and then let off and then layer up again, and the track ends before it gives you any kind of tidy conclusion.

“Bad Love” is the third single from Limbo, following “Cola” and “Miami Crest,” and at this point you can start to see the shape of what the album is going for. Written over two years in Stockholm, it’s been described as coming out of a period of personal pressure and loss of control, and it sounds like that in the right ways. Not wallowing, not performative, just pointed. The Swedish pop underground has been turning out some genuinely unusual material over the last few years, and Namasenda is one of the more consistent examples of what that scene sounds like when it’s working.

Limbo arrives May 8 on YEAR0001. If the run-up singles are any indication, it’s not going to be an easy or casual listen. “Bad Love” in particular demands something from you. Whether it gives anything back depends entirely on what you bring to it.