Weljar: Dark Folk Band to Record Second Album
Look, I get it. You’re tired of algorithms force-feeding you the same three chord progressions that every indie band with a ukulele thinks will make them the next big thing. You want something that sounds like it was recorded in a forgotten cave by people who take their spirituality from mushrooms and old bones instead of Instagram wellness influencers. Enter Weljar, a Polish dark folk project currently asking for €1,000 on Kickstarter to make their next album — which, in the grand scheme of crowdfunding grifts, is almost refreshingly modest.
When “Dark Folk” Actually Means Something
Weljar isn’t fucking around with the tourist version of paganism. This is the real deal — Slavic shamanism, melancholic folk roots, and ritual ambient textures that sound like what would happen if ancient forest spirits had access to recording equipment. Weljar‘s 2023 debut album Tur featured tracks with names like “Topielica” (a Slavic water demon who drowns people), “O wiedźmach” (About Witches), and “Uczta Kruków” (Feast of Crows). If you were expecting cheerful tavern songs about drinking mead, you came to the wrong band.
The project describes itself as music arising from “the longing for the closeness of nature and the primordial force inherent in it,” which is a very eloquent way of saying they’re tired of modern life’s bullshit and want to commune with the things that lived before Christianity showed up and told everyone to calm down about the trees.
Their Bandcamp reviewers — that rare breed of music nerds who actually know what they’re talking about — compare Weljar to Heilung, Myrkur, and Huldre. One listener noted the music creates multiple layers of tone, from dark ambient to something “sweet and timeless,” suggesting you should “do yourself a favor and listen to this music in forest you like to visit.” Because apparently listening to Weljar in your apartment is like drinking fine wine from a Solo cup — technically functional but missing the point entirely.
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The Kickstarter Campaign: €150 Down, €850 to Go
As of now, Weljar’s new album campaign has one backer who pledged €150 — meaning they’ve raised 15% of their €1,000 goal with 46 days left to run. The campaign runs through February 20th, which gives you plenty of time to decide if you want to be part of funding what the band calls “a new chapter in our story.”
Here’s the thing about this campaign: it’s not asking for much. They’re not trying to raise $50,000 to record in Abbey Road with an orchestra. Weljar want €1,000 for professional production, expanded arrangements, and richer textures. This is DIY at its most authentic — artists who clearly give more of a shit about making music that matters than buying a tour bus.
The campaign promises to take their raw compositions and transform them into a fully realized album, expanding their artistic vision with deeper arrangements and broader emotional landscapes. Which is marketing speak for “we want to make this sound even more like the soundtrack to your existential crisis in the woods.”
What Makes WELJNAR Worth Your Attention (And Money)
Let’s talk about what Weljar actually sounds like, because “dark folk” has become such a catch-all term that it could mean anything from acoustic Depression-core to literal Nazis with mandolins. Weljar falls into the neofolk/dark folk tradition that includes bands like Wardruna (who soundtracked Vikings and made Nordic paganism cool again), Heilung (the German/Danish/Norwegian collective who describe Weljar‘s music as “amplified history”), and various Slavic folk projects that treat their cultural heritage like something to be preserved rather than marketed.
Tur clocks in at 10 tracks of percussion-heavy, atmospheric compositions that incorporate what listeners describe as something akin to throat singing — though calling it “Celtic throat singing” is the kind of genre confusion that happens when your reference points are limited to Enya and whatever Spotify’s algorithm thinks counts as “Viking music.”
The album features vocals from what they call the “dark voice of slavic witches,” which sounds pretentious until you actually hear it and realize that’s just accurate description. This isn’t music for Renaissance faires where people drink turkey legs and pretend to be wenches. This is music for people who read about Baba Yaga as a kid and thought “yeah, that sounds about right.”
Artist Maja Winnicka designed the album cover, and if you check it out on Bandcamp, it’s the kind of imagery that makes you understand why your grandmother was suspicious of anything that came from the old country — gnarled, organic, slightly unsettling in a way that makes you want to look closer.
The Bigger Picture: Why This Matters
At a time when most mainstream music is engineered in a lab to be as inoffensive and algorithmic-friendly as possible, projects like Weljar represent something increasingly rare: artists making music because they’re compelled to, not because they’ve identified a market opportunity.
The neofolk/dark folk scene has been growing steadily over the past decade, with festivals like Midgardsblot in Norway bringing together bands like Wardruna, Heilung, Enslaved, and Dimmu Borgir alongside smaller acts from across Europe and Russia. These festivals aren’t just concerts — they’re ritualized gatherings where the opening ceremonies are referred to as “blots” (Norse pagan sacrificial rituals), and the whole vibe is less “entertainment event” and more “connecting with something that existed before recorded history.”
Weljar fits into this tradition, specifically the Slavic branch of it. While Scandinavian/Nordic pagan folk has gotten most of the mainstream attention (thanks largely to Vikings and various metal bands), Slavic pagan traditions are equally rich and significantly more obscure to Western audiences. Projects like Weljar, Nytt Land (a Russian husband-wife duo from Siberia), and Poland’s own Jar are doing the work of excavating and reinterpreting these traditions for modern audiences who are hungry for music that feels ancient in a world that feels increasingly hollow.
There’s also a 2,500-save Spotify playlist Weljar curates called “Slavic / Dark Folk / Pagan / Ambient Music” with 67 tracks, which tells you Weljar and its members are actively engaged with the broader scene rather than just existing in isolation. That kind of curatorial work matters — it builds community, spreads the word about similar artists, and creates a network of listeners who give a shit about this stuff.
But Is It Good?
Here’s where I’m supposed to give you some bullshit about how “good” is subjective and everyone’s entitled to their opinion. But fuck that — Tur is legitimately compelling if you have any interest whatsoever in atmospheric, percussion-driven folk music that doesn’t sound like it was focus-grouped for maximum TikTok virality.
The album’s tracks range from the moody to the outright ominous, with field recordings, traditional instruments, and vocals that sound like they’re being channeled rather than performed. It’s the kind of music that works best when you’re alone — walking through woods at dusk, sitting in a dark room during a storm, or just generally embracing the fact that existence is weird and slightly terrifying.
Bandcamp listeners describe it as “melancholy, melodies and atmosphere” that’s “amazing and kinda not from this earth,” which is high praise from people who wade through hundreds of pretenders to find the real thing. Another review mentions it takes them to “another place much like Heilung, Myrkur and Huldre,” which is exactly the comparison you want if you’re making this kind of music.
The fact that Tur includes a booklet with lyrics and an English translation shows they’re thinking about accessibility without compromising the core of what they’re doing. You’re not supposed to understand every word on first listen — that’s part of the point. But they’re giving you the tools to dig deeper if you want to.
Should You Actually Back This Thing?
Look, here’s the reality: €1,000 is not a lot of money for professional music production. That’s like… two days of decent studio time, maybe three if you know someone. The fact that Weljar is only asking for that much suggests they’re either very good at DIY production, very bad at math, or just realistic about what they can actually raise in a crowdfunding campaign as a relatively obscure Polish dark folk project.
But that modesty is kind of the point. This isn’t a cash grab. This isn’t some band that’s going to spend half your pledge money on Instagram ads. This is people who want to make a specific kind of music and need just enough financial support to do it properly.
If you’re into:
- Dark folk that actually sounds dark instead of just acoustic
- Slavic paganism and mythology
- Music that sounds like it was recorded in places where cell phones don’t work
- Atmospheric, ritualistic compositions that prioritize mood over hooks
- Supporting artists who are preserving and reinterpreting cultural traditions
Then throwing €10 or €20 at Weljar’s Kickstarter is probably one of the better uses of your money this month. Will it change your life? Probably not. Will it help fund music that sounds like the forest floor after rain mixed with the distant echo of something ancient and unknowable? Almost certainly.
The campaign ends February 20th, and they need to hit €1,000 or they get nothing (that’s how Kickstarter works — all or nothing). One person has already put in €150, which suggests at least one human on this planet understands what they’re trying to do.
The Bottom Line
In a music landscape dominated by calculated viral moments and artists who sound like they were designed by committee, Weljar represents the opposite impulse — music that’s regional, specific, and unapologetically weird. They’re not trying to be the next big thing. They’re trying to channel something that predates the concept of “big things” entirely.
Weljar‘s first album Tur proved they can deliver on the promise. Their Kickstarter campaign is asking for just enough money to do it again with better production values. And in a just world, projects like this would be over-funded on day one by people who understand that not everything needs to sound like it was made for a Super Bowl halftime show.
Weljar’s new dark folk album Kickstarter is live through February 20th, 2026. Check out their previous album Tur on Bandcamp to see if this is your kind of weird before you throw money at it. Or don’t. The forest spirits probably don’t care either way.
