Barbro’s slow-burning indie folk reckoning “What Men Do” is a vulnerable, quietly radical song about unlearning inherited behavior and the invisible ways resistance begins.
Stream: “What Men Do” – Barbro
Smoke, silence, and something simmering just beneath the surface – a tension you feel, more so than you see.
Barbro’s latest single glows like a quiet ember, built from gently burning electric guitar chords and a hot-on-the-mic vocal that feels both delicate and devastating. It’s the sound of someone trying to name the invisible – the impulse, the rupture, the hollow ache that expands in the wake of another person’s unwillingness to meet you where you are.
Vulnerable and cathartic, “What Men Do” lingers like a shiver down the spine, tracing the emotional patterns we move through when the world refuses to shift with us. It’s a softly smoldering indie folk reverie about the space hurt leaves behind, and the small, unnoticed gestures where resistance begins.
I get that we won’t follow up
I gave it up so long ago
what men do when they’re acting out
can hardly smell the smoke more
from your hair on to your jacket
calmly I clean up on the table
I haven’t heard that sound yet
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “What Men Do,” the fourth single of the year from Danish artist Barbro (they/them). Independently out December 11, the track deepens their blend of folk-rooted intimacy and left-field pop experimentation while offering an early window into Crossfade, Barbro’s upcoming album arriving February 6, 2026. Known for threading poetic candor through subtly radical arrangements, Barbro is part of a striking new generation emerging from Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory (RMC) – a cohort that also includes Astrid Sonne, ML Buch, and Clarissa Connelly, and one that is reshaping Denmark’s experimental and folk-adjacent spaces through curiosity, DIY ethos, and quietly incisive vision.
“The song ‘What Men Do’ is in a way about acting out, or having have had enough (what even is the English language), but in describing that, I found myself going into loops both emotionally and musically, slowly figuring that acting out doesn’t always happen in sensations, like you see in movies, but sometimes it shows in cleaning tables and tying knots,” Barbro tells Atwood Magazine. “It started of as kind of an eye-roll to the problematic justification of mens behaviour, the boys-will-be-boys kind of thing, but ended up being about what kind of space we take up in the world. I love playing this song live as well, using this weird five-measure loop as a playground for acting out, each time a little bit different.”
I haven’t heard that sound yet
telling me to stop my breathing
Do you know about this?
Word charmer like in a box set
fingers crossed i tied my knots down
what men do when they’re acting out
“What Men Do” isn’t, as its title suggests, a song about men so much as the emptiness that tends to gather around them.
Barbro lets this emptiness take shape through repetition – a clear, circling melody; a soft rhythmic loop; lyrics that move like someone pacing a room they know too well. I get that we won’t follow up / I gave it up so long ago / what men do when they’re acting out. Each image feels deliberately unembellished, almost mundane, which is precisely what makes it powerful. The acting out Barbro describes is quiet, nearly invisible: calmly I clean up on the table. The rupture hides in the routines.
The track’s five-measure structure becomes its emotional engine – a slow, spiraling reckoning that distorts time just enough to make you feel slightly off balance, slightly tilted, as if the ground is shifting while you’re still standing on it. Their voice cuts through with striking clarity, soft yet unflinching, holding vulnerability and resistance in the same breath. It’s music that refuses to perform certainty; instead, Barbro lets the unresolved remain open, alive, electric.
“What Men Do” ultimately becomes a meditation on unlearning – how the smallest movements can carry enormous emotional weight, how the hardest truths surface in gestures rather than declarations. It’s a song that sees the world’s undercurrents while they’re still in motion.
And in many ways, it hints at the world Barbro is building on Crossfade. Their upcoming album was born in the abandoned basement of their old school near Kolding Fjord, where they returned in 2024 to record in the empty art room of their childhood. Those sessions pulled memory into the present: neighbors dropping by with tools and cables, old friends offering small gestures of support, the room echoing with its own past. The result is a body of work folded and refolded like paper – intricate, intimate, and alive with transformation, featuring collaborations that widen Barbro’s sonic palette, including one with Nilüfer Yanya.
If “What Men Do” is any indication, Crossfade promises to be a breathtaking new chapter for the Danish indie artist. Barbro is crafting with remarkable clarity and intention, letting tension, tenderness, and experimentation coexist without cancelling each other out. It’s a striking step forward from an artist who keeps reshaping the edges of what their music can hold. Stream “What Men Do” exclusively on Atwood Magazine!
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Stream: “What Men Do” – Barbro
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© Jana van Brussel
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