Lucy Fitzgerald 
DIVKA pulls off something rare on “folk fatale”, their debut full-length as a Toronto duo built around Alina Kytasty Kuzma on bandura and Zoë Santo on viola. Released April 2, 2026, the record takes old songs from Ukrainian and other women’s singing traditions and hands them back with sharper edges. The bandura and viola combo shouldn’t work as well as it does. Alina’s playing has this rich, layered pull to it, almost like standing in a clearing in the woods, while Zoë’s viola brings grit and tension right when a song needs to bite. The vocals swing from polyphonic and haunting to raw and guttural, and that swing is basically the whole point of the album title. Old, a little unsettling, never stuck in the past.
Track by track, nothing here stays in one lane. “Of Storms, Babas, and Fiddling Rabbits” and “Kozel” are playful and rooted in rural life and nature, while “Harbuz”, “Oj Na Mori”, “Volodar”, and “Shopski Prispevki” move between raunchy and gutting when it comes to desire and courtship. Then there’s “IDK”, a cover of a 1950s feminist gunslinger country novelty with the ending rewritten so the patriarchy finally gets what’s coming. On the heavier side, “Rusalka” sits with the environmental and human cost of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and “Garden of Time” digs into inequality and how empires never actually last. That’s a wide range of emotional territory for one record, and DIVKA moves through all of it without stumbling.
This is one of the more original folk records to come out of Canada lately, and it holds up whether you’re paying close attention or just have it on in the background. “Kozel” and “IDK” have been stuck on repeat for me, and I really don’t think anyone else in the folk scene right now is doing what this duo is doing. Go follow DIVKA on their socials and check out the DIVKA website so you don’t miss tour dates, new singles, or a look at how these songs come together. Put “folk fatale” into your regular rotation, whether that’s a road trip playlist, a rainy afternoon queue, or your main folk mix, because these songs already survived war and silence to get here and they deserve to be played loud. Catch them live if you get the chance. This duo is just getting started, and getting in early feels like being handed a secret.
Listening to songs so you don’t have to! Just kidding :D, you totally should. Music blogger by day, nurse by night
