Stockholm-based post-punk neuroscientist Nicole Sabouné has today shared a second track from her fifth album ANA (the Arabic word for 'I' or 'me'), coming out later this year via RMV Music, an offshoot of the recording studios co-founded by ABBA's Benny Andersson in 2009.

Following last December's "So Far Out," “Lubnan (لبنان)” continues the story of Sabouné's first ever visit to Lebanon in the summer of 2024, capturing the moments in which it began to feel like something less like an ancestral homeland and more like a place she could exist more freely in the now.

Listen to “Lubnan (لبنان)” below:

“There is no place that has affected me the way Lebanon has," she says of the sentiment behind the track. "Everything is dizzying and warm. People look like me here. Here, I am not a stranger. Not to them, and not to myself. Never has anything been so beautiful.”

Writing on Instagram she adds:

"My beloved Lebanon that turned out to be the biggest love of my life. Whatever happens. I now carry your beauty, your love, your warmth, your strength, your wounds, your scars, your struggles, your past, and your future within me. And nothing has ever felt so right."

“Lubnan (لبنان)” was co-written and co-produced by Sabouné and Billy Cervin, with musicians Jon Bordon and Joakim Janthe also credited as songwriters. The voice we hear at the end is a conversation between Sabouné and her godfather, recorded in Lebanon – which, as we are reminded on a daily basis, is still being subjected to destruction, bombardment, and land theft at the hands of Israel, which continues to act with total impunity as a rogue and genocidal entity across the region.