Kuára: Psalms and Folk Songs is the first ECM album led by Finnish drummer Markku Ounaskari, in a trio with pianist Samuli Mikkonen and Norwegian trumpeter and singer Per Jørgensen. Its sources are Russian Orthodox psalms and folk melodies of displaced Finno-Ugric peoples, the Karelians, Vepsians and Udmurts, all approached through improvisation. Ounaskari described the result as "like a journey through the night". The album received the Emma award for the best Finnish jazz recording of 2010.

Ounaskari came to the attention of producer Manfred Eicher during the sessions for Sinikka Langeland's Starflowers, and was invited to bring a project of his own. He and Mikkonen had played as a duo since 2004, and Jørgensen joined them about two years before the recording. Eicher suggested adding the Russian psalms, a natural step for a drummer whose father was half Russian and who grew up attending Orthodox church. The trio recorded in May 2009 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer. This was Mikkonen's ECM debut, while Jørgensen had already recorded for the label. According to the press notes quoted by PopMatters, the title is an Udmurt word for sound.

Eight of the fourteen pieces are traditional, and the other six are credited jointly to Ounaskari and Mikkonen. The opening Polychronion, a Slavonic liturgical chant, rises from the low strings inside the piano before brushed drums and trumpet enter. On the Udmurt song Soldat Keljangúr, Jørgensen's voice moves from wordless vocalese to high cries. The Gipsy's Stone sets airy piano lines against pointillist percussion. The closing Sjuan Gúr rests on funereal drums. Throughout, the silences carry as much weight as the melodies.

In Jazzwise, Stuart Nicholson heard a record where "each musician has the time and space to be his own storyteller", in music both mysterious and redemptive. In The Irish Times, Ray Comiskey wrote that "the silences are as significant as the textures created by the lucid duo and trio dialogues", and praised the rapport between Ounaskari and Mikkonen. Writing in PopMatters in 2011, Michael Kabran treated the album as a soundscape as much as a jazz record and gave it seven out of ten.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2116, released in November 2010. The cover reproduces a photograph by U. T. Sirelius of Vogul men rowing to a sacrificial festival, taken in 1899 or 1900 and held by the National Museum of Finland.