Edinburgh via Dublin artist Iona Zajac shared her first release since 2023, the brittle, haunting new single “Summer”.

Zajac’s powerful yet measured voice has earned her a strong reputation, leading her to perform alongside renowned artists such as Mercury Rev, Arab Strap, Lankum, John Francis Flynn, Anna B Savage and Cassandra Jenkins. She was also invited to open for and sing with The Pogues in Dublin last December making such a strong impression that this Spring she will continue as a vocalist for The Pogues on their May UK tour, sharing vocal duties with the likes of Nadine Shah, John Francis Flynn, Lisa O’Neill and Lankum’s Daragh Lynch across the dates.

“As Jack’s mother says in the fable Death in the Nut: ‘without death there can be no life.’” Zajac states, speaking on the spectral folk of “Summer”. “Summer starts with a dream as many of my songs do, and a morning penny-drop realisation that we need more than love to be good for someone. It’s about my tendency to bury sadness in order to continue. It’s about the necessary fragility of life and forcing hard feelings in to make way for the good. Emily Dickinson’s poem got inside my head like the drum that beats at her own imagined funeral march. I give a verse to her.”

“It is a song for those dreaming of better days, of wars to end, of lovers to return, of heads to leave the fog. And when Summer finally comes, we might have found enough strength from the bad to make it last.”

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