Jani Kaunis & The Puukot / Tappava Tie

The year was 2025, and by all accounts that mattered, Jani Kaunis was dead. He was. And with him, The Puukot ought to have slipped quietly into the night.

They had played the punk basements. The forest festivals. Midsummer gatherings and the odd Tornedalian gas stations. It would’ve been easy to lean back, full-bellied with glory, content with the legacy. Their mark left on the ledger of culture.

Especially in an age where rautalanka — that Finnish dancehall-country with its straight eighth-note swing and guitars sharp as piano wire — had faded into silence. Media gave it no mind. No spotlight. Not anymore. Was there even room for it in the modern world?

But the stubbornness wouldn’t let go. Nor the sisu. That grit. That code. The work ethic that made them rehearse in suits and patent leather shoes. That had carried them through peppermint schnapps, nosebleed gigs, and sauna fights. It still burned.

There was more to be done.

Because it moves, doesn’t it. It stirs. Out there, somewhere, are people who haven’t heard it yet. People hungry for that pull, the rush, the trembling swell of tremolo waves and the wrecked tenderness of Jani Kaunis’ baritone.

For all the art mankind has hewn — the sculpture, the oils, the operas, the thousand-volume novels — few things ever told the truth like rautalanka. From the macaroni mush of childhood to the frost-bitten family grave. From the hangover dread in a sun-warmed caravan to the chapel’s fearful grace. From one heart. To another.

So Jani Kaunis had no choice but to rise again.

“Tappava Tie” is the second single from the record to come. A soft entry. Bite-sized. Gentle on the tongue and jaw. A way to learn the sound. To remember how it’s meant to be. Because here’s the truth:

The question isn’t why you’d play rautalanka when the radio plays Beyoncé and the calendar reads 2025. The question is why anyone would waste time on anything else.