Releasing a song called “Snow” just as winter turns up is either obvious or clever, and with Minna Ora it’s clever. “Lumi (Snow)” is her eighth solo single, the newest addition to a run of nature themed releases, and it uses the season for something far more interesting than atmosphere.

Think about what snow actually does. It comes back every single year, no matter how the last one went. You can’t stop it and you can’t earn it. That’s the heart of what Minna is getting at: renewal isn’t a one off miracle, it’s a cycle, and a better choice might be waiting the way the first snowfall always is. Snow also melts, which matters just as much. Hard seasons end. Even the longest winter has a final week.

The person in the song badly needs that reminder. Loneliness has crept into her life slowly, one hardship stacked on another, until an ordinary, settled existence sits somewhere she can no longer reach. She goes back over the turning points, the small decisions that only looked important in hindsight, and wonders who she’d have become if she’d gone another way. Anyone who has ever stared at an old photo and thought “what if” will recognise the feeling straight away.

Minna does everything herself: the writing, the arranging, the recording and the production. In practical terms that means the song reads like a handwritten letter rather than something typed up and passed through an office. Every choice on it is hers, and on a subject this close to the bone, you can feel the difference.

Nature, spirituality and the bigger questions life throws at people have always fed her writing, and she has never steered away from personal material. Still, this stands out as one of her most open looks at loneliness yet. It sits comfortably beside “Metsä (Forest),” “Meri (Sea),” “Tuuli (Wind),” “Tuli (Fire),” “Myrsky (Storm),” “Viima (Freeze)” and “Kallio (Rock),” releases that have already found an audience and a lot of good press well beyond Finland.