Mariner is a collaborative studio album between the Swedish band Cult of Luna and the American vocalist Julie Christmas, formerly of the bands Made Out of Babies and Battle of Mice. Serving as Cult of Luna's seventh studio album and the first time Christmas has appeared on the entirety of a full-length album since her 2010 solo debut The Bad Wife, Mariner was released on April 8, 2016 through Indie Recordings. Contrasting the industrial city themes of Cult of Luna's last studio efforts, Vertikal and Vertikal II from 2013, Mariner focuses its concept on space exploration.

Both Julie Christmas and the members of Cult of Luna had a mutual respect and appreciation for each other's music prior to working together on Mariner. Though Christmas reached out earlier, the two parties began communicating about a collaboration more seriously when Cult of Luna curated the May 2014 festival Beyond the Redshift in London. Cult of Luna wanted Christmas to participate and perform her solo album The Bad Wife. The performance didn't work out but both parties kept in touch after the festival. Guitarist Johannes Persson sent Christmas a demo track the band was working on at the time and asked her to write lyrics and record vocals. Impressed with the result, Cult of Luna asked Christmas if she would be interested in creating a full album. Persson recalled what initially drew him to Christmas in the first place, stating: "I just love Julie's singing. She can go from the softest melodies to the wildest screams, and everything in between. The range of her voice is incredible."

Mariner was written and recorded over the course of about a year. Cult of Luna worked on the instrumental portions in a studio near their hometown of Umeå and digitally sent Christmas demos and tracks. Working with producer Andrew Schneider at his own studio in Coney Island in New York City, she wrote lyrics, recorded vocals and sent them back to Cult of Luna in Sweden. After telling Christmas the thematic and musical direction Cult of Luna was aiming for with Mariner, the band gave her full creative control to write and perform how she best saw fit. Christmas said the experience of working with Cult of Luna was "excellent" and elaborated: "Those guys are great to work with personally, because they have a sense of humor, and they're all super talented but regular, normal people who are just trying to do something that they believe in." Since the album was created largely through online file sharing, Christmas didn't even meet any of the members of Cult of Luna in person until September 2015 when Mariner was roughly halfway completed and the band was doing a small U.S. tour.

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