Harmless

The second studio album from Harmless is a new breakthrough in Nacho Cano’s musical horizons. By Them By You By Me blends the appealing indie-pop that Cano has established himself with for a decade-plus with gauzy shoegaze textures and the winsome full-band sound of the Slumberland and Captured Tracks catalogs. These ten songs find their creator ruminating on the intersection between creativity and careerism—the inexorable struggle that myriad artists face while uncovering their true selves within their work—and Cano emerges reborn with a new sense of purpose and sonic vitality.

By Them By You By Me is the latest release in an estimable body of work that Cano has built for himself under the Harmless name, dating back to the project’s 2012 debut, I’m Sure, under the initial alias Twin Cabins. It was from that first mixtape that Cano achieved a viral hit in the form of “Swing Lynn,” which dominated TikTok and ended up tallying more than 328 million plays on Spotify alone.