Iranian-Australian vocalist, songwriter, and producer Parissa Tosif [pronounced pa-REE-sa toe-SIF] today unveils her affecting and singular debut album I have this memory of you. LISTEN HERE.

Parissa Tosif has always straddled two worlds. Long navigating the luminous pulse of modern pop with the spiritual inheritance of her Iranian ancestry, I have this memory of you captures her journey to reconnect with a heritage she has only known in fragments. What began as a collection of stories from family and friends who were refugees and migrants, she blended their lived experiences with her own reflections through songwriting. “Like everything in my life that I need to discover, music is the only way I can truly delve into it,” she says.

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. Could you genuinely connect to a place you’ve never seen, or a time you’ve never known? I have this memory of you, is both an ode and a response to that space between what is remembered and what must be sung anew.

Across ten tracks, I have this memory of you moves fluidly between past and present, East and West, the individual and the collective. Inspired by stories of revolution, love, loss, and the complexities of diasporic identity, charged with curiosity and reverent restoration. The result is a shimmering, intimate portrait of identity with the question of ‘who and what has made me who I am?’ at its heart. A deep parable of anemoia and the passage of culture through generations, it’s a sentiment made all the more potent, and at times unnerving, knowing Parissa’s album tugs for a place she will perhaps never physically experience herself.

Capturing the transgressive force of the ordinary in the extraordinary lives of migrants, refugees, and people who leave their motherland, I have this memory of you imbues hagioptasia, enhanced by the power of voice. “Because of my mum’s decision to leave Iran, and the sacrifices she made,” Tosifexplains, “I’m the first person in my family to have a public voice and to sing in public. I wanted to make something that was a gift to all the women in my lineage — because my mum is a turning point in that lineage.”

A musical conversation between disparate worlds and senses, I have this memory of you merges the organic and the ethereal. Western songwriting and traditional Iranian instrumentation collide with language and culture. Tosif’s balanced craft here recalls the depth and style of James Blake to Lana Del Rey, magnifying a salve for the soft ache of migration and hope to connect the frays of the diaspora. By the album’s end, that search for heritage becomes something larger: a meditation on oneness.

“I think heritage is emotional for everyone,” she reflects. “This album is me opening my heart — my discovery, my gratitude, my longing, my love for my family and my history — and hoping that people find something in it that makes them feel more connected to their own.”

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. I have this memory of you is her invitation to recall, reconnect, and honour what is at once individual and universal, personal and historic. It offers a voice that echoes our shared humanity, reminding us that across every border and generation, what endures and redeems is our boundless capacity to heal and to unite.