Bathe

On the surface, Bathe’s radiant R&B is as inviting as the waves lapping the shoreline at a five-star tropical resort. But listen closer, and there are shadowy depths within.

Singer-songwriter Devin Hobdy and guitarist-producer Corey Smith-West, who formed Bathe eight years ago while attending the University of Pennsylvania, make music that sounds like a balm for the anxieties of modern life. This flowing sense of ease contributed to their 2021 debut album Bicoastal drawing in more than 30 millions streams on Spotify. Amid that record’s unhurried grooves, though, were pangs of yearning and desperation that complicated Bathe’s placement in so many chill vibes playlists.

The Brooklyn duo’s follow-up LP, Inside Voice(s), doubles down on this beguiling contrast. Serene chords, luxurious beats, and infinitely hummable melodies soundtrack songs about familial grief, numbing millennial angst, and the cyclical despair of underserved communities. Featuring vocal production from Jake Aron (L’Rain, Snail Mail), mixing by Joe Visciano (SZA, Kendrick Lamar), and mastering by Joe LaPorta (David Bowie, Beach House), Inside Voice(s) follows in the lineage of albums like Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange in being both lush and sorrowful—a plea to the present filled with ghosts of the past, emerging in an era when the future seems anything but certain.