Parissa Tosif (pronounced pa-REE-sa toe-SIF), today shares ‘Mysterious (دریا)’. The single serves as the emotive centrepiece of her forthcoming debut album, I have this memory of you, due independently on March 26. LISTEN HERE + PRE-SAVE LP HERE.

Produced by Alice Ivy, ‘Mysterious (دریا)’ is the most contemporary lean of Parissa Tosif’s singles to date, straddling traditionally recorded Iranian instrumentation as the daf and tombak and oud, against driving electronic production. “Working with Annika (Alice Ivy) was a really special experience. She held the story so gently and allowed me to bring out my exploration through writing. She’s incredibly talented at finding the right sounds to fit the emotion of a story,” Parissa shares.

In a landscape where much of pop music trades in surfaces, Parissa Tosif offers depth — a mirror held up to memory, identity, and the quiet resilience of ordinary lives in extraordinary times. ‘Mysterious (دریا)’ reinterprets a manuscript written by her great-uncle during a time of uncertainty in Iran, turning it into a meditation on the shrouded force that binds family across generations. “No more secrets, things I’ll never know. Running through the city cause we’re going home,” carries its chorus, before closing with an acapella rendition of her great-uncle’s poem.

Of ‘Mysterious (دریا)’, Parissa explains “I wanted this song to feel as ethereal and otherworldly as I felt when reading Advice of the Sage of the Allahu Akbar Mountain Pass which is a mystical story written by my mum’s uncle during a time when he was facing huge challenges in his life. The story struck me for so many reasons. Writing this song has played a big part in helping me connect to my heritage and find roots in the confusion of the second-generation experience. It felt so comforting to know there was another poet/creative in my family, and how he channeled his suffering into helping them.”

Memory has its own voice. Sometimes it hums softly in the background, like a whisper you half-remember or a melody your mother once sang. Other times, it arrives suddenly and completely, flooding you with all that was lost and all that remains. Long navigating the luminous pulse of modern pop, as the vocalist and co-writer of the electronic duo Vallis Alps, with the spiritual inheritance of her Iranian ancestry – Parissa Tosif has always straddled two worlds. Having never visited Iran, the osmosis of her heritage would become the heartbeat of her debut album. Inspired by stories of revolution, love, loss, and the complexities of diasporic identity, the result is a shimmering, intimate portrait of identity.

Above all, she considers whether you can form memories to a place you haven’t seen, or will ever get to physically experience. “It’s rare to have first-hand insight into the emotions, pain, and events in my ancestors’ lives. To have access to this story, and the raw expression of my relative’s experience, made me feel a little bit closer to my history,” she continues. ‘Mysterious (دریا)’ is the clearest indication of how I have this memory of you captures Parissa’s journey to reconnect with a heritage she has only known in fragments. A place she has only ever known from the memories, history books and films of others, she began by collecting her own stories from family and friends who were refugees and migrants, blending their lived experiences with her own reflections through songwriting.

Moving fluidly between past and present, East and West, the individual and the collective across ten tracks. Each song, she adds of I have this memory of you, “is like emptying out that discovery — a mirror of what I’ve found and what I’m still learning.” Gathering the threads of ancestry, migration and motherhood as on ‘River (گلریز)’, ‘Fury (نیلوفر آبی)’ and ‘I Sing For You (پروانه)‘, Parissa Tosif creates her own delicate, complex and ubiquitous tapestry of diaspora: to root yourself in new soil while the current of memory keeps pulling you home, and to feel tethered to ancestors known only through story.