Before moving to Brooklyn in 2010, she met with a representative from Epic Records at a SXSW event and was eventually signed to the label in 2009.

She began working on the album, collaborating with musicians like Jimmy Harry, Dan Carey, and Lester Mendez.

A digital extended play titled Oh Land EP was released in October 2010, featuring five songs that would later appear on the parent album.

[3] On 19 October 2010, Epic Records released a digital extended play titled Oh Land EP which features five tracks from the parent album ("Sun of a Gun", "White Nights", "We Turn It Up", "Rainbow", and "Wolf & I").

A reissued version of Oh Land was distributed exclusively in Denmark on 5 December and featured three previously unreleased bonus tracks ("Speak Out Now", "Twist", and "En Linedanser"), the official music video for "White Nights", and a live performance recording of "We Turn It Up".

[3] It features "dreamy violin-laden confessions" and was called a "take on Misery-era Blonde Redhead" by Drowned in Sound's John Calvert.

[11][12] "Break the Chain" references the singer's back injury following a dancing accident, where she refuses doctor's orders by continuing to pursue her dreams;[13] it contains dubstep and flamenco "undertones" in addition to shackle sound effects.

[10][11] BBC Music's Fraser McAlpine wrote that the track's style was similar to the work of Marina and the Diamonds.

[17] "Lean" and "Wolf & I" are trip hop tracks, with the latter being described as dramatic by Gaffa's Michael Jose Gonzalez.

[11] The album closes with "Rainbow", which John Calvert felt was influenced by Oh Land's decision to move to Brooklyn.

and at a Billboard promotional effort, both in 2011,[16][25] and at three nightclub shows throughout New York City, immediately following the single's initial release.

[36] An accompanying music video, directed by production company ThirtyTwo, was released onto her Vevo account on 19 October.

[43] A live rendition of the song was used as the music video and featured Oh Land singing in a room filled with balloons.

[52] Barry Walters of Spin wrote, "This stunning Dane's synths-plus-strings slant on singer-songwriter lovesickness offers refinement over innovation, yet Nanna Øland Fabricius beguiles with a gently insistent presence.

"[19] Kerri Mason of Billboard opined that Oh Land "might have made the year's first great left-field pop album", praising the songs as "endlessly catchy" and concluding that "the tilting scales of light and dark give the collection a definite creep factor and a clever complexity.

"[11] AllMusic's Andrew Leahey described the album as an "'anything goes' mix" of multiple genres, adding that Oh Land "doesn't rewrite the rule book as much as join the ranks of La Roux, Little Boots, and Janelle Monáe.

[10] In a mixed review, Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani expressed that Oh Land's "cinematic arrangements bring Janelle Monáe's ambitious approach to pop music to mind, but tracks like 'Wolf & I' and 'Lean' draw a bit too heavily from the trip-hop playbook [...] and, however well-excecuted [sic] they may be, end up sounding derivative.

"[13] Similarly, Fraser McAlpine of BBC Music felt that "there's a bit of an identity void at the heart of the thing, a lack of personality.

"[17] Drowned in Sound's John Calvert called the album "hip, diverse and always vibrant", but also branded it "pretty forgettable".