Belgrade New Wave Runs From Paket Aranžman in 1981 to Cosmopolis by Bones in Butter
A Lucerne-Born Songwriter Found His Band Among Belgrade’s Alternative Musicians for a 13-Track Album
Cosmopolis was built from the bottom up. Songwriter Milutin Krašević sketched each arrangement on synthesizers, loops and samples. Then a drummer and a bassist locked down the foundation, and the harmony vocals and the guitar went on top. Bones in Butter released the 13-track album in May 2024. It carries on a habit of the Belgrade new wave of the early 1980s: post-punk that keeps a pop tune at its centre.
Bones in Butter are in the playlist below with Going To Cosmopolis from Cosmopolis, and the Bones in Butter profile gathers the band’s coverage. The album came through PopHits.Co Music Charts, the programme that verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Cue it up, then keep reading.
The Belgrade New Wave Set the Terms in 1981 With a Compilation Called Paket Aranžman
Its story starts with one record. In 1981, the label Jugoton released Paket aranžman, a compilation of three young Belgrade bands. They were Šarlo Akrobata, Idoli and Električni Orgazam. It became one of the most influential records ever made in Yugoslavia. Even now, it has a cult following across the countries that came after it.
After that, the bands on it went in different directions. Idoli made the pop case for the new wave, while Šarlo Akrobata split after one album. Two more Belgrade groups grew out of that split: Ekatarina Velika and Disciplina Kičme. So within a few years the city had a whole family tree of bands. Each kept the wiry energy of post-punk and added its own idea of a song.
In short, that lineage is the wave this album belongs to. Bones in Butter came along almost four decades later. Still, the band’s own description could sit in a history of that era: post-punk darkness and rigour, set against melody nobody expects.
Bones in Butter Brings a Swiss-Born Songwriter Into the Belgrade Lineage on Cosmopolis
Krašević took the long way in. He was born in Lucerne, Switzerland, to Yugoslav parents, and punk and new wave reached him as a teenager. In the mid-1990s he played in a band called Kasual, gigging locally and releasing an EP. After that, music became a private habit. For years he worked as an English and German translator, latterly for a Swiss aerospace company. Even so, he kept writing at home.
The move to Belgrade, with his wife and son, changed that. He founded Bones in Butter in 2019. The first release, the Love or Fear EP in 2020, used session musicians in Serbia, Italy and Brazil, all recording remotely. Once he settled in, the city supplied a band.
Today, the Belgrade lineup is a cast of local alternative players. Luna Škopelja sings, Todor Živković plays guitar, Dejan Škopelja plays bass and Tom Fedja Franklin plays drums. Srdjan Popov handles mixing and mastering. Meanwhile, Krašević sings and plays keyboards. On Going To Cosmopolis, track 12, the Spotify credits name him as composer, lyricist and producer.
Cosmopolis also shows how that scene works. The album uses three drummers across its recording: Franklin, Marko Milivojević and Stefan Pejatović. That reflects how the lineup keeps evolving, and how much Bones in Butter draws on Belgrade’s collaborative session players.
As for the record itself, it runs to 13 tracks and almost 50 minutes. It opens with You Just Drowned and puts Going To Cosmopolis second from the end. In between, the songs shift between indie, gothic, electronic and pop moods without settling. They range from the two-minute I Can Love to the five-minute They All Shine For You. It came out through a one-album arrangement with Rexius Records, and the band has been independent again since.
Idoli and Disciplin A Kitschme Are the New Wave Acts From Belgrade Closest to Bones in Butter’s Cosmopolis
Two bands from that first wave make the clearest reference points. Idoli released Odbrana i poslednji dani in 1982. In 1998, the book YU 100 named it the best album of Yugoslav pop and rock. In addition, it is one of the few Yugoslav records NME ever reviewed. Bones in Butter follow its lesson: a dark frame can hold a song people want to sing back.
Disciplin A Kitschme is the other. Dušan Kojić formed the band in Belgrade in 1981 as Disciplina Kičme, out of the Šarlo Akrobata split. The bass guitar was its lead instrument. Later, when the Yugoslav Wars broke out, Kojić moved to London and rebuilt the band there under its new name. Krašević made the opposite journey, from Switzerland into Belgrade, and his project shares that one-writer, changing-cast shape.
Outside the region, meanwhile, the support has been steady. The Big Takeover summed the band up in one line, writing that such music leads rather than follows.
The story is still moving. Zero Hour, self-released in April 2026, is the first single in a new series. The band has been writing those songs since 2024. So Cosmopolis now reads as the end of one chapter, made in a single partnership. The next one is already under way.
It suits listeners who grew up on 1980s and 1990s alternative rock and pop. They still want new records in that shape. It also suits anyone who knows Paket aranžman and wonders how a Belgrade band sounds when it inherits that history instead of copying it.
TopMusic.News’s curator team: “Start at track 12, Going To Cosmopolis, and let the album finish on Escape, the shortest piece at 2:06. Those last seven minutes hold the whole idea: a dark post-punk frame with a tune you can carry home.”
Stream Cosmopolis on Bandcamp. Follow Bones in Butter on Spotify and YouTube, and find the band’s news on its official website.
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