I love writing about music: the chance to sit and grapple with someone’s art, the chance to share what it means to you. But sometimes it feels intimidating and humbling. Such is the case with Priya Ragu’s "Good Love 2.0," a remarkable song so creative and sure of itself, it feels hard to do it any justice with mere words. Wasting no time, it opens with a Kaytranada-esque funky groove. The bass rings while Ragu dazzles with smooth vocals. After dancing our way through the chorus, the second verse showcases Ragu’s range. She reappears, rapping her way through with confidence and composure. Few can float so effortlessly across styles and genres all in the course of one song. Just shy of the two-minute mark the tune takes a wild new turn, exploring something entirely different. Ragu pulls from South Asian influences, cultivating a moment that demands your attention — a fresh take on a more typical trap structure. The intensity subsides as mesmerizing waves of vocals emerge, at the same time soothing and breathtaking. And although the end of the song is nearly unrecognizable from the start, each moment, each choice, feels purposeful and earned. "Good Love 2.0" is a song that stands on its own and earns your trust along the way, and it's just a taste of Ragu’s promise. 

Almost nine months after the January release of his charming Borderline album, the multifaceted artist Christian Kuria has returned, this time wielding a sonically pleasing new single to start those fall playlists with. “Enemy” flows together and settles into the ears of the listener with ease and cohesion, similarly to the way the song was created. As Kuria shared with vacancy. magazine, “My process is usually pretty meticulous. It often takes me several days or even weeks to complete a song, but it’s really exciting when a tune comes together without a struggle. 'Enemy' was one of those songs; I wrote and produced it in a day. Everything just worked, and I wasn’t afraid to try a new approach stylistically.” 

“Enemy” is a harmonious sensory experience of its own, carrying colorful guitar riffs, a dreamy soundscape and a celestial vocal palette that will uplift listeners into the clouds. The alternative R&B track spoils us with its excellent production, just like that of his well-loved renditions of contemporary music on YouTube. Yet Kuria is an artist whose own music and sound is ever-growing and will therefore be everlasting.

Ritual Talk’s newest offering “relate2” has a soft and soothing groove that builds to a gentle fullness in the last third. “You want someone to relate to / you got more than that coming 'round,” Alex DeSimine repeats with layered vocals over a bright but sparse guitar, before it’s joined by laid-back and gentle drums. The Brooklyn-based indie psych-soul band slowly layers synths and vocals to create a landscape of sound that feels thick and almost tangible like a morning fog. It never breaks out or builds to a climax. Instead, it explores every inch of its pocket, leaving no space untouched by the end. The simplicity of the repeated two-line chorus keeps the track grounded, allowing for expansion sonically while the verses take the message of yearning for connection a little deeper. But maybe you don’t need other people to find the wholeness you desire; as the last line of the second verse suggests, “you want love and you want safety / shouldn’t that start inside?”

What happens when the present painfully collides with the future you imagined? It’s a question that Portland-based artist Tuesday Faust explores on her latest single, "Grace." Launching with a clanging train bell, the track establishes itself as an incredibly vivid storybook of a song. The lyrical narrative begins at the end of another story, with the opening line, “when she walked away, the train came.” The way it’s phrased, it almost sounds like she chose to walk away, and that somehow caused the train to arrive. Or perhaps it was a random coincidence of timing. Either way, one thing appeared as the other disappeared. Throughout the rest of the song, the narrator tries to reconcile the two and bring them back into the same space, even as she chooses to get onboard the train that carries her away. A synthetic whistle reminiscent of Thomas the Tank Engine begins to punctuate the end of phrases as soon as the figurative train arrives. The ironically tuneful whistle juxtaposed against viscerally visual, serious lyrics makes the story feel both dreamlike and achingly real. At the tail end of the track, the texture shifts to something minor and vaguely modal, resolving somewhere unexpected and open-ended. Charmingly existential, "Grace" straddles the line between literal and metaphorical, and takes up space in the back of your brain for days.

Every day contemporary music makes an ascension towards a production-led apex. The introduction of new stylistic approaches and advances to music has given artists and producers the ability to breach parameters of seemingly set genres, redefining music entirely while establishing a more creative and inclusive industry. Yet in all the good that comes with new means and styles of production, there are two sides to this coin, and many have argued that modern music production is oversaturated and is beginning to replace artist originality. 

Dazzling the world with both top-notch production and sublime artistry, Xavier Omär and Mereba give music fanatics the perfect middle ground in their latest collaboration, “Like I Feel.” The track deciphers the internal musings of a pair of not-really-friends in order to answer the ultimate question, “Do you feel about me how I feel about you?” Vocally, the song stretches to planes outside of this one, with both artists gracefully re-intertwining soul into contemporary R&B with each stirring verse topping a bass and drum-heavy beat. “Like I Feel” is the presumptive eleventh track on Omär’s forthcoming album, if You Feel, preluded by “So Much More” and “All Our Time” featuring Jae Stephens.

The San Antonio R&B/soul artist is much known for his passionate track “Blind Man,” a track sporting 61 million Spotify streams and counting. Whether you’ve been rocking with Omär since his 2016 album, The Everlasting Wave, or happily discovering him from this new story-like track, the everlasting soul and passion in each of his songs will be enough to keep you satiated until the new album drops. Photo by ReeL HuMn / Brandon Lavender.

Tim Atlas stays true to his DIY roots on “Cold Shoulder,” a lo-fi tune that questions what vulnerability is worth. Penned, produced and mixed entirely by Atlas, the single teases his upcoming third EP, which will be his first as a fresh signing to Nettwerk Records. The R&B-saturated pop track blends ever-so-slightly dissonant chords with an animated beat as Atlas comes to terms with the end of something ambiguous, perhaps not worth calling a relationship, that was doomed from the start. “Drinking in the basement / Sinking in my own self doubt” has Atlas asking himself if he was the fool all along for leaving himself unguarded, if a shoulder to lean on was really so much to ask. For me, I’ve all but forgotten how to talk to people this year, much less forge intimate connections in an already vulnerable state. I see myself “scroll the web just to feel closer” all the time, and feel Atlas’ regret in letting someone in. It's barely a whisper, the way Atlas distorts his voice to confess: “I wish you'd call just to say hi to me." “Cold Shoulder” perfectly encapsulates the ennui and introspection that so characterizes bedroom pop.

Couch Prints is back with an electric anthem for those with recurring dreams and love spells. Songwriters Brandon Tong and Jake Truax have found an honest way to embody the perseverance that true love (even inexplicable love) can inspire without abandoning the celebration of inner strength that pales every other question and concern. The audience will undergo a resurrection with lead singer, Jayanna Roberts. Angelic tones and instrumental drones dawn an awakening that builds as if the song is slowly fighting to stand vertebra by vertebra. Eventually, Roberts charges forth to meet her fate. "I'm getting so familiar," she laments, with extraordinary confidence. "Faces" is an unconditionally loving friend to those who have chosen to follow their hearts, in spite of what the past has warned against. Photo by Wade Schaul.

To put it simply, “Devil” is a groove to get lost in. There is a special vibrance about Jeremy Schmett’s debut as a solo artist that is filled with honesty and grit, as well as optimism and uplifting cadence, as this LA-based producer/guitarist is not afraid to be his true self on all platforms. While the track initially hits your ears as an indie rock/pop tune, layers of Schmett’s jazz and soul influences peel back to reveal his myriad capabilities, as he "dances with the devil in a pretty dress on the floor.” This is an artist to be on the lookout for; a male Maggie Rogers with the guitar prowess of Tom Misch. We can’t wait to see what kinds of genre-bending genius comes from Jeremy Schmett as he continues to make his mark on the indie music scene.

This recent single from Australian artist FELIVAND feels vintage yet brand new, giving timeless themes new life. The synths develop such rich character and attitude, while her vocals feel like a fresh wrinkle in today’s incredible alt-R&B scene. The second verse opens with a line that I’ve kept returning to — “Every time I see you, feel like I gotta re-meet you” — and ends by asking, “What happened to the person I knew?” It’s a moving distillation of the song’s theme. FELIVAND reaching out for someone that’s just not there to reach back any more. A gut-wrenching line that suggests this has been a repeated effort. Trying, hoping, believing that what once was good can be good again. But the ship has sailed, or rather we find that it’s not even the same ship anymore — a devastating result. And as we feel for FELIVAND, we see there’s more damage being done. This propels us into the bridge, an incredibly powerful highlight moment of the song. FELIVAND shines beneath this spotlight, a moment full of so much emotion and soul, with palpable pain. There’s no beating around the bush anymore: “You don't think of consequence, the wrong type of confidence. You're hurting your friends.” Can’t get enough? Us either. Good news: her newest single “Ebb & Flow” just came out today as well.