Finnish alt-pop artist, producer, and songwriter Cecil Opia announces new album GHOSTS AND PHONE CALLS, a deeply personal album about digital loneliness, disconnection, desire, and isolation, set to be released on September 25, 2026.
Opia describes GHOSTS AND PHONE CALLS as “a roadside motel room… Inside are unanswered phone calls, texts left on read, breakups happening through screens, restless nights, body dysphoria, insecurity, and thoughts that never quite become complete sentences.”
Opia wrote the album while relocating from Helsinki to Berlin, finding herself alone and far from the people and places she knew; displacement became inseparable from the music. The album also emerged after a nearly eight-year relationship ended abruptly through a single phone call in that same room.
“It came from this feeling of never quite belonging anywhere. As a queer trans woman, I’ve often felt like I’m standing just outside the room, even when I’m inside it. I could be in Helsinki and feel disconnected, then move to Berlin and realise the feeling had followed me. The album became a way of documenting that distance. All the things you don’t know how to say when you’re alone with your phone at three in the morning.”
GHOSTS AND PHONE CALLS also marks a distinct musical evolution in Opia’s sound. Drawing from alternative pop, late-’90s trip-hop, shoegaze, and early-2000s aesthetics, the album moves between intimacy and fragility, euphoria and visceral energy. Its lyrics are more direct, vulnerable, and explicitly queer.
The lead single “This Body” confronts gender dysphoria and the complicated relationship between identity and the physical self. Focus track “Text Messages” captures the obsessive spiral of wanting someone who has stopped answering. “Fluorescent”, meanwhile, explores queer joy and sexual liberation through the intimacy of self-pleasure, turning solitude into something sensual, euphoric, and entirely your own.
Disconnection also appears in the album’s guest features. Finnish-French artist yaya (Sony Music) appears in French, while ÄmbÖ (Fountain Records) contributes a feature in Japanese.
“I wanted the features to be in languages I don’t speak. It creates this feeling that even when you’re hearing another person, you can’t completely understand them. That felt very true to what the album is about.”
A large portion of the album was written collaboratively with yaya and “Fluorescent” was co-written with Mendi Moon (Ranka Entertainment).
Despite its collaborative writing process, the album remains entirely Opia’s own production world: every song on GHOSTS AND PHONE CALLS was produced and mixed by Cecil Opia. The album was mastered by Tommi Vainikainen and Stefan Brown at Abbey Road Studios.
GHOSTS AND PHONE CALLS will be available to stream on September 25, 2026.
