Sweden has a lot more to offer the world than just sensibly designed cars, vodka, and flat pack furniture. In recent years it has churned out a legion of musical artists and bands, much beloved in my rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood and similar locales around the world, many of whom have been directly supported by the country’s still-generous welfare state.

I don’t know if indie-pop heartthrob Jens Lekman has personally benefited from this particular kind of welfare state largesse, but the state of Swedish social democracy certainly seems to be on his mind a lot these days. For years he’s been known for his light-hearted yet acerbic takes on love and everyday life, but a number of songs on his more recent releases demonstrate a growing concern for the durability of the much-vaunted Swedish social model. On “Shirin,” a standout on his 2007 album Night Falls Over Kortedala, Jens swears to his Iraqi refugee hairdresser not to report her to the tax and immigration authorities for running a beauty salon out of her own apartment. His recently released EP, An Argument With Myself, has two songs that are even more overtly political. “A Promise” sees him talking to a sick friend forced into the workforce by new active labor market policies that are perhaps a bit too active. On first listen, “Waiting for Kirsten” seems like little more than a good-natured tale of drunkenly stalking the actress Kirsten Dunst during a recent visit to Lekman’s native Göteborg. But underneath the song’s glossy pop veneer lies his real concern: a defense of the venerable principles of social-democratic solidarity that made Sweden “Sweden”:

’Cause times are changing, Kirsten:
Göta Älv is slowly reversing;
They turned a youth center into a casino;
They drew a swastika in your cappuccino.
And the VIP lines are not to the clubs
But to healthcare, apartments and jobs.
“Hey buddy can I borrow five grand?
’Cause my dad’s in chemo,
And they wanna take him off his plan.”