Playing around with dark and occult powers has long been a staple in blues and rock – from the mythology of Robert Johnson at the crossroads, through Jimmy Page’s obsession with Aleister Crowley and into the disquieting world of Norwegian black metal from the 1990s onwards.

As such, one would not expect a pop star as nice as Gabrielle Aplin to dabble in the demonic. But that’s exactly what she’s doing. Well, sort of.

For her new album, Dear Happy, she and AWAL have created a tarot card-centric campaign to promote it. Not only does the £50 box set edition of the album come with a set of 14 Dear Happy tarot cards (along with a signed LP, signed photos, a poster and a limited-edition 10-inch live EP), she is also using them as part of the vote function within Instagram Stories.

Ahead of the release, she recorded a series of 15-second videos talking about each of the 14 songs on the album. Rather than post one a day for a fortnight, she is putting two head-to-head for a fan vote over a week. So each day, as part of her Stories, fans get to vote on one of two tracks and, after the votes are tallied, the winning track gets its explainer video added to Stories.

That doesn’t mean that clips for the seven tracks that “lose” each day will go unseen. All 14 videos will be stitched together and hosted on her YouTube channel as well as get their own slot on her IGTV.

The individual elements of the cards are also being animated and uploaded to Giphy, so that fans can use them as GIF stickers in their own Instagram stories and posts.

Obviously we are too scared to mess around with tarot cards as we watched too many horror films growing up and know only too well what happens when you dabble with sinister forces that are beyond human understanding. So kudos to her for being braver than us. But don’t say we didn’t warn you… [sinister organ music, green lighting and creaking coffin lid SFX to go here].