Atwood Magazine is excited to share our Editor’s Picks column, written and curated by Editor-in-Chief Mitch Mosk. Every week, Mitch will share a collection of songs, albums, and artists who have caught his ears, eyes, and heart. There is so much incredible music out there just waiting to be heard, and all it takes from us is an open mind and a willingness to listen. Through our Editor’s Picks, we hope to shine a light on our own music discoveries and showcase a diverse array of new and recent releases.

This week’s Editor’s Picks features Sebastian Schub, Aubory Bugg, tig3r lewis, Roe Kapara, Jack Cullen, and Marfa!

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Every once in a while, happiness hits so hard it becomes almost physical – a rush in the chest, a grin you can’t suppress, the delirious conviction that life is, in fact, f***ing wonderful.

In those rare, radiant moments, everything tastes sweeter, everyone you love seems a little magical, and being alive feels like the greatest idea anyone’s ever had, full stop. You want to hold onto that feeling with both hands and squeeze every last drop from it while it lasts.

Blissful, effervescent, and irrepressible, Sebastian Schub’s “kiss of life. (you’re kinda magical)” is euphoria manifest in song – a sun-kissed, dazzling folk rock celebration overflowing with love, light, sweetness, and the sheer pleasure of realizing life can occasionally be this effing good. Guitars sparkle and surge, voices pile gleefully atop one another, and Schub sings with the feverish conviction of someone trying to soak up the whole moment before it passes. “Oh, baby, baby, you give it to me, the kiss of life / it feels so good, if this is heaven, then I wanna die,” he cries, before landing on the simplest possible declaration: “Baby, baby, life is f***ing so nice.” There’s no cool remove here, no emotional half-step, no attempt to disguise sincerity as irony. As irresistible as it is utterly exuberant, “kiss of life.” throws itself head over heels into happiness – and good luck not going with it.

Punch a wall, blow a kiss
I never thought I could feel this
Life ain’t so shitty when love is bliss
Didn’t ever score, now I never miss
Some call it lucky, I call it fate
It takes time, but it’s never late
Well, love jumps to the ones who wait
Wasn’t feeling good, now I’m feeling great

Released July 3 via Island EMI/Capitol Records as Schub’s first new music of the year, “kiss of life.” opens another chapter for the Hamburg-born, London-based singer/songwriter a year after his Sing Like Madonna EP. Schub cut his teeth in London’s open-mic rooms before graduating to support slots with Noah Kahan and Asha Banks, sold-out “early versions” pop-ups across the UK and Europe, and now his own headline shows. Yet for all that upward movement, the most exciting thing about “kiss of life.” is how little it sounds concerned with arrival, achievement, or proving anything at all. This is music made in the ecstatic present tense – loose-limbed, gloriously alive, and intoxicated by the people already standing beside him.

That unguarded happiness marks a particularly delicious change of temperature for an artist whose songs have so often made a home inside yearning and hurt. Schub wanted no shadow hanging over this one, no emotional catch hidden beneath the chorus.

“I just wanted a song that was exhaustingly fun and overwhelmingly optimistic, and joyful,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “Like 100 shots of espresso. My music is often so full of yearning and hurt. For once, I just wanted it to be uncompromisingly happy.”

Uncompromisingly happy is exactly right. The seduction starts before Schub even sings a line: “Okay, mwah,” we hear, the sound of someone planting a literal kiss at the song’s threshold before everything bursts into motion. “kiss of life.” moves with the giddy logic of a crush that has temporarily reorganized reality itself: “Punch a wall, blow a kiss / I never thought I could feel this / life ain’t so shitty when love is bliss,” Schub sings in the opening verse, ricocheting from physical impulse to existential revelation in a matter of seconds. The song keeps chasing that high through images that are funny, sensual, mundane, and completely sincere. A lover becomes “the God’s truth,” but also “cold Coke on a sunny day / a yellow coat in the pouring rain / a cigarette when I need a break.” That mixture is part of the charm. Schub doesn’t need love to become lofty or abstract; its magic lives in how suddenly everything tastes better, looks brighter, and lands differently.

And then comes that chorus. “You’re kinda magic / you’re kinda magical,” he repeats with almost childlike wonder, stretching a tiny thought into something enormous through sheer force of belief. The arrangement rises around him in kind, giving the refrain the scale of a communal singalong without sanding away its sweetness. Schub’s voice carries both grain and glow, climbing into each line with enough urgency to make infatuation sound less like a private emotion than a public event. By the time the background voices come flooding in, the song has stopped resembling one person confessing love and started sounding like an entire room caught in the same rush.

Oh, baby, baby, you give it to me, the kiss of life
It feels so good, if this is heaven, then I wanna die
Why would I try to compromise on you and I?
Baby, baby, life is f***ing so nice

You are
You’re kinda magic
You’re kinda magical
You are
You’re kinda magic
You’re kinda magical

That communal feeling runs deeper than arrangement. Schub surrounded himself with the people he loves while making the record, letting friendship become part of the song’s actual physical fabric.

“Mainly because I managed to get all of my friends to sing on it,” he says of why the recording brought him so much joy. “I had a big day in the studio with everyone that’s dear to me, so that was really special. But overall, the entire process was just led by such an intuitive, live music approach. Whatever felt right in the moment in our caffeine-fueled recording session stayed on the record. I usually overthink everything, so this was quite freeing.”

The result sounds like that freedom. “kiss of life.” has polish, but it never sounds manicured into submission; its exhilaration comes from the sense that people are reacting to one another in real time, pushing the song higher because everyone in the room is having too much fun to hold back. Even its overflowing vocals carry emotional history. Two of Schub’s friends had unexpectedly become parents, helping reshape what began as a song about romantic love into something broader – an ode to friendship, gratitude, and the people who make being alive worth celebrating. Schub eventually pulled those friends directly into the recording, baby included.

A face you’d see on a magazine
Like Leonardo in ’93
Yeah, she’s a winner, a killer queen
She’s the God’s truth, you know what I mean?
Cold Coke on a sunny day
A yellow coat in the pouring rain
A cigarette when I need a break
Wasn’t feeling good, now I’m feeling great

“Songwriting can be such a lonesome quest sometimes – just sitting in your room for hours tinkering away,” Schub reflects. “I wanted the rest of the process to be filled with the people dearest to me. I know every voice that’s sung and every hand that’s played that song. Making it was basically a family affair.”

That may be the loveliest thing about “kiss of life.”: Its abundance isn’t an illusion manufactured by a gigantic production. The love we hear is literally in the room. Every cheer, vocal, instrumental flourish, and spontaneous burst carries the fingerprints of Schub’s community, giving the song a warmth that no amount of studio perfection could counterfeit. Its breathlessness starts to make sense, too. When he sings “wasn’t feeling good, now I’m feeling great,” the line lands as more than romantic transformation; surrounded by the people who made the record with him, it becomes gratitude shouted back at the world.

That looseness is increasingly central to the music Schub wants to make. After spending stretches of the past year overthinking songs until, in his words, his “head was spinning,” he has been returning to the immediacy of playing music in rooms with other people – both through his intimate “early versions” shows and in the studio itself. Rather than chase pristine takes, Schub has leaned further into accident, instinct, and the strange electricity that disappears when a performance gets fussed over for too long.

“I’ve wanted to keep things as organic and alive as possible,” he says. “We often just lied to our musicians; made them play crazy takes and kept them in their entirety. It really has been a journey of finding all these beautiful mistakes and bringing them up into the light.”

“kiss of life.” may be the purest expression of that philosophy yet. Its joy is tangible and infectious precisely because it retains the mess of being alive inside it – the singalong voices, the off-the-cuff takes, the caffeine, the friends, even the baby: The feeling that everybody has piled into the same room and somebody forgot to tell them to settle down. Even alongside this month’s groovier, lonelier single “haven’t found love.,” the song burns with special intensity. Schub describes his current emotional life as a constant tossing between “extreme highs and hopeless lows,” and “kiss of life.” plants its flag firmly at the highest possible point: Not contentment, but exhilaration; not affection politely expressed, but love spilling everywhere.

That kind of happiness can make cynicism look awfully boring. “kiss of life. (you’re kinda magical)” is feverish, romantic, playful, dramatic, breathtakingly beautiful, and – above everything else – so much fun. Schub wanted the musical equivalent of 100 shots of espresso, and somehow he made something even more intoxicating: a song that makes friendship feel sacred, infatuation feel infinite, and an ordinary sunny day seem like proof that the universe has briefly gotten everything right.

Turn it up. Throw the windows open. Call somebody you love.

Life is f***ing so nice.

Oh, baby, baby, you give it to me, the kiss of life
It feels so good, if this is heaven, then I wanna die
Why would I try to compromise on you and I?
Baby, baby, life is f***ing so nice

You are
You’re kinda magic
You’re kinda magical
You are
You’re kinda magic
You’re kinda magical

Knowing exactly how a love story is going to end doesn’t make the fall any softer.

Sometimes the cruelest part is watching someone drift back toward the person they never really got over – and wondering why you’re still standing there.

Charming, charged, and effortlessly catchy, Aubory Bugg’s “nosedive” is a folk rock enchantment with the timeless snap of those great ’90s and early-aughts country-pop crossovers. Bright guitars and rocking drums keep it surging forward, while Bugg’s crystalline voice and spirited melodies give all that sweetness a cathartic, cutting edge. Released June 24 via Dualtone, the single finds the 21-year-old singer/songwriter caught in one of romance’s crueler waiting rooms: The miserable limbo of knowing a relationship is slipping away before anyone has actually said the words out loud.

Guess I saw this coming
You’re so good at jumping
Into old things like they’re new
So you can leave me stranded
Take this all for granted
And go spend your nights up in his room

“I was seeing someone who I really cared about and while we were dating they reconnected with their ‘one that got away,’” Bugg tells Atwood Magazine. “There were a solid few days of ‘well okay I know what’s gonna happen, and you know what’s gonna happen, so what’re we doing?’ and I think ‘nosedive’ really lives in those few days. Now looking back, it’s a little funny. I think about that version of myself and I think ‘girl get up what’re you doing?’ but it was important for me to be able to work through it in a fun song and I’m excited for it to connect with people who’ve been through similar things.”

That awful limbo is all over the second verse. “Am I overthinking? / ’Cause we’re barely speaking / sucks you’d rather be with him / so should I stop calling? / Or I can just keep stalling / until he makes you mad again,” Bugg sings, narrating the little bargains we make when the answer has already become obvious but we aren’t ready to act on it. That’s what makes “nosedive” such a perfect title: This isn’t one sudden crash. It’s watching the ground rush closer while everyone involved pretends there’s still time to pull up.

The chorus turns that helplessness into release. “There’s nothing like a first love / coming back into your life f***ing it all up for me,” Bugg sings, the melody practically beaming while the lyric seethes underneath. Bitterness becomes buoyant; humiliation becomes something you can shout back at the speakers. And every return to “nothing like your right guy, wrong time” shifts the balance between resignation and accusation, as though repetition itself is helping Bugg decide what she actually thinks of the mess.

‘Cause there’s nothing like a first love
Coming back into your life
f***ing it all up for me
Nothing like the good stuff
Rushing back into your mind
like it’s a real love story
Nothing like a nosedive
Falling blind, wasting your time
on things you loved before me
Nothing like your right guy, wrong time

“I think to me it just really hits home on the anger and simultaneous understanding,” Bugg explains. “Like, ‘yeah this makes sense but god it really sucks.’”

“nosedive” sits at the center of Bugg’s forthcoming debut album i think i had something once, out September 18 via Dualtone – a 12-song record shaped by two upheavals arriving at once. Bugg was leaving her Illinois hometown for Nashville while weathering what she calls “maybe the worst breakup of my life,” and much of the album grew from trying to navigate that collision of freedom, displacement, heartbreak, and change. Rather than smoothing those experiences into one sonic palette, Bugg and collaborators Matt Martin and Jon Class gave each song its own lane; “nosedive” gets to be the bright, biting folk rock release valve.

“I think this is the most honest and straightforward I’ve ever been in my music,” Bugg says. “I really love weaving these veiled and complex narratives that kind of hint at the truth, but this record is a departure into my real life and how I felt about it at the time.”

This directness puts Bugg in conversation with generations of songwriters who have made plainspoken emotional truth hit like revelation. She counts Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt, Carole King, and Linda Ronstadt among her musical north stars, alongside contemporary inspirations Christian Lee Hutson, Phoebe Bridgers, and Adrianne Lenker. “nosedive” carries that lineage lightly: Its storytelling cuts straight to the bruise, while its enormous melodic lift keeps the song moving forward even when Bugg herself is emotionally stuck.

With enough distance, that honesty has changed its posture. “When I started it I felt very defeated and embarrassed, and I think that was how the song originally felt to write,” Bugg says. “I think now though, it’s a little less self-deprecative and a little more accusatory.”

That evolution is clearest in the bridge. The person Bugg was seeing may have been caught between past and present; now Bugg begins imagining a future in which she finally steps outside the triangle. “When I finally make my peace / don’t come crawling back to me / oh, when I’ve put my mind at ease / oh, don’t come crawling back,” she sings, turning the questions of verse two into the first outline of a boundary. The nosedive may already be underway, but she’s no longer strapped helplessly into the passenger seat.

Bitter without becoming joyless, wounded without losing its grin, “nosedive” transforms an excruciating few days into the kind of chorus you’ll want to shout for years.

If your headphones start smoking halfway through Tig3r Lewis’ “TOO EASY,” don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This song is so blisteringly hot, so swollen with passion and drama, you just might burn your ears. Soul-shaking, smoldering, and breathtaking in every sense of the word, “Too Easy” is a feverish eruption of R&B, soul, and guitar-driven rock, all of it built around one of the most staggering vocal performances you’ll hear all year. Lewis doesn’t merely sing his affection; he roars it from the rafters. Stadium-sized guitars blaze behind him as his voice climbs higher and harder, the verses simmering before the chorus explodes wide open. “Baby, loving you is too easy / I’m so used to doing this the hard way,” he belts, every syllable charged with relief, disbelief, and desire. It’s intimate and enormous at once – a love song with sweat on its brow and fire in its lungs.

Released May 1 via Republic Records, “Too Easy” is too hot to handle – and far too good to resist. The song marked a major step forward for Southern California singer/songwriter and guitarist Tig3r Lewis, arriving alongside news of his major label signing. Lewis first crossed paths with producer Jeff “Gitty” Gitelman while interning for him in Los Angeles; after Lewis began posting covers online and attracting attention, the two started working together in earnest, laying the foundation for the music he’s making today. Still early in his ascent, Lewis already carries himself with the conviction of an artist who knows exactly how hard he wants a song to hit.

The song’s ease, however, is hard-won. “I think meaningful connections are few and far between,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “When you have a bunch of really shitty experiences, it can make you feel like you’re almost waiting for something to go wrong when you meet someone new. Expressing gratitude is the way to keep the good flowing. I’ve met a lot of people who made love feel complicated. I love out loud. People aren’t used to that.”

That last thought practically detonates inside “Too Easy.” Lewis is singing about the shock of meeting someone who removes the games, guesswork, and emotional gymnastics from intimacy – someone who “give[s] it to me straight,” shows all their cards, and makes trust seem almost suspiciously simple. Even relaxation becomes romantic revelation: “Every time I’m with you I could be relaxed / you ain’t superficial how you talk straight to my heart.” Yet Lewis gives that emotional safety a thrillingly physical charge. “All the pleasure with the right amount of hurt,” he sings later, folding tenderness, lust, challenge, and surrender into the same breath.

The song’s sheer force makes perfect sense within the “grunge groove” world Lewis has been building – his collision of classic soul, R&B, blues, and rough-edged rock designed to move as hard as it hits. On “Too Easy,” created with Gitelman, Theron Thomas, and Ilsey Juber, the ingredients ignite: Muscular bass, cranked guitars, bright melodic flourishes, and a live-wire performance that sounds forever one push away from combustion. “Grunge groove is rock music you can 2-step to,” Lewis explains. “It’s a mosaic of all the music I hold near and dear. James Jamerson’s basslines. Cranked amps. Saturated guitar parts reminiscent of Spanky Alford and Kurt Cobain if they were tripping on tape echo.”

And then there is that voice. Smoky one moment and absolutely volcanic the next, Lewis’ delivery is the song’s undeniable centerpiece. He cites Otis Redding and Thom Yorke as musical north stars – jokingly dubbing himself “Otis Yorke” – while pointing to Marvin Gaye’s unadulterated live performance of “What’s Going On” at Montreux as part of his personal gold standard. You can hear that hunger for abandon in “Too Easy.” Lewis keeps pushing upward until restraint disappears altogether, especially as the song barrels into its closing repetitions of “touching you / wanting you / loving you / is too easy.” His voice doesn’t decorate the emotion; it becomes the emotion – roaring, soaring proof of a man utterly consumed by what he’s singing.

That conviction now sits at the center of Lewis’ debut EP Mr. Right Now, released today (August 14^th) via Republic Records. Across six songs, the record wrestles with masculinity, desire, insecurity, bravado, and the friction between the person Lewis is becoming and the person he has been taught he should be. “Too Easy” catches one of its most exhilarating possibilities: Vulnerability can be frightening precisely because it matters, and giving yourself openly to another person requires its own kind of nerve.

“‘Too Easy’ is a reminder to love loudly,” Lewis says. “There’s no weakness in that.”

Lewis takes that directive literally. “Too Easy” doesn’t whisper affection or hold desire at arm’s length – it bellows until the walls shake. Every guitar flare, every pounding groove, every impossible rise in his voice makes love sound less like surrender than exhilaration: raw, sweaty, scary, gorgeous, alive. By the time Lewis reaches the final chorus, “easy” hardly sounds small at all. In his hands, loving someone freely becomes the biggest, boldest thing in the room.

Your feet leave the ground before you even realize you’ve fallen head over heels.

One second you’re thinking straight; the next you’re floating, grinning like a goofball, drooling from the mouth, and convinced the whole world begins and ends with one person.

And oh, what a magical, wonderful place to be. Roe Kapara’s “My Love” is a love-soaked fever dream with the blinders fully on and the heart happily surrendered. Cutting, catchy, and deliriously alive, the indie pop anthem practically levitates through its verses before detonating into a chorus that hits like a celebration: Fat bass, glistening playful synths, rousing brass, and Kapara’s showstopping voice roaring his devotion from the rafters. “My feet can’t touch ground / I’m drooling from the mouth / she’s my love, she’s my love,” he sings, and the whole thing is so infectious, intoxicating, and unabashedly lovestruck that resistance feels pointless. This is infatuation with the volume cranked – passion, churn, and charm exploding together in one glorious rush.

Released in February via Epitaph Records as Kapara’s first single of the year, “My Love” continues the strange, magnetic indie pop streak he sharpened across last year’s “Feel Sexy” and “Good Times,” following 2024’s Big Cigars & Satin Shorts EP. The St. Louis-born singer/songwriter describes his musical world with characteristic irreverence – “music for people that enjoy a PBR in the shower and a crisp, cloudy night in the Fall” – while drawing inspiration from what he affectionately calls “boomer rock,” including The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and Marty Robbins, alongside newer favorites like Djo and Alvvays. On “My Love,” those instincts collide with a more synthetic glow, landing somewhere between vintage romantic abandon and the gleaming indie pop maximalism of the 2010s.

“There is something so intoxicatingly dangerous about infatuation,” Kapara tells Atwood Magazine, “because it’s easy to confuse for love. I tried to capture that feeling with ‘My Love.’ When I was making the song with Ryan Spraker, we wanted it to feel like Van Morrison had a baby with 2010’s indie pop synth music. It’s easy to say love songs are corny, but at one point or another we all need them.”

His song thrives on that collision. Its verses are comparatively softer and more subdued, Kapara cooing bizarrely sweet details like “Her skin tastes candy sweet / oh she’s my honeybee,” before the chorus comes crashing back in with full-bodied abandon. The contrast makes every return hit harder. Kapara’s high register is the real knockout: Acrobatic, bright, and pushed almost to its breaking point, it gives the song its sense of reckless commitment. He sounds less like someone calmly describing love than someone physically incapable of containing it.

“I ended up leaning a bit further into the 2010s synth, indie pop direction,” he reflects. “I think a part of me was also trying to see how high my voice could go without blowing it out completely.”

That brinkmanship is exactly what makes “My Love” so much fun. Kapara understands that infatuation is ridiculous and radiant in equal measure – the brain flooded, the body buzzing, every little detail suddenly charged with meaning. “She shocks me like an electric fence / nothing’s ever made more sense,” he sings, and the line captures the song’s whole spirit: Absurd, ecstatic, completely convinced and consumed.

Whether you hear true love, chemical delusion, or just “the cute little synths,” “My Love” is an irresistible blast of romantic overdrive – and for three-and-a-half minutes, falling this hard sounds like the best idea in the world.

I was always going to stop for a song called “Jessica” – that’s my wife’s name.

But Jack Cullen’s “Jessica” won me over on its own terms: Blissful, spirited, and radiant, this anthemic folk-pop reverie bursts with an open-window exuberance that makes the whole world look a little brighter. Cullen’s falsetto is the revelation – bold, soaring, and remarkably forceful, carrying every line with such conviction that his passion seems to spill straight through the speakers. “And I’m on my way through the cold wind back to us,” he sings, his voice lifting higher as the song races forward, and suddenly all that momentum feels inseparable from love itself – the urgency, the hope, the irresistible pull toward another person. Maybe that’s why “Jessica” hit me so hard: Beneath all its sunshine and forward motion, Cullen captures a wholehearted devotion I recognize immediately in the love I have for my own Jessica. How could I possibly hear this and not smile?

Truly, “Jessica” earns every ounce of my affection.

Released earlier this year via RCA Records, “Jessica” is a kiss of light from the British singer/songwriter following an extraordinary stretch of movement, music, and reinvention. Cullen was once a professional rugby player before surgery ended his sporting career and redirected him toward songwriting; since then, he has built his musical life with the same restless physicality, running 12 marathons in 12 days for cancer research and later cycling more than 650 miles from Edinburgh to Glastonbury, playing impromptu performances along the way before making his festival debut. His 2025 EP Everything centered gratitude, home, and friendship, and “Jessica” carries that open-hearted spirit forward with even greater lift – the sound of an artist who seems to want music to move through the body as much as the mind.

The name at the center of the song belongs not to Cullen’s lover, but to the close friend who gave him the push he needed. While he was falling in love and struggling through a difficult moment in that relationship, Jessica told him the truth. The conversation that followed changed everything – and her intervention becomes the song’s hinge. “And when Jessica said: ‘Follow your heart / when’re you gonna start to grow up / show up and show her love?’ / Made me realise the shit that I’d done,” Cullen sings, letting friendship cut cleanly through self-deception.

From there, “Jessica” takes flight. His falsetto climbs higher and brighter as regret becomes momentum, the refrain surging forward on the repeated promise “I’m on my way.” Even his bluntest admission – “‘Cause you put all your faith / in the man who f***ed it up” – arrives surrounded by such irrepressible melodic lift that remorse starts sounding almost euphoric. Cullen isn’t wallowing in the mistake; he’s sprinting toward whatever chance remains to repair it.

“It’s a song about moving forward,” he explains. “Running towards something whilst holding your hands up that I did wrong. Acknowledging that, and making it right. And hoping that there’s still time to do so.”

This forward motion is everywhere. “Jessica” practically begs for open roads, longer strides, faster runs, and sunlight on your face – which, fittingly, is exactly what Cullen wants from it. He hopes listeners drive with the windows down, quicken their pace on a walk, run a little faster, get goosebumps, and above all leave with a smile. Beneath all that brightness sits an equally generous idea: We screw up. We tell the truth. We try again. And sometimes honesty gives love another place to go.

“I hope listeners enjoy it with a smile on their face!” Cullen shares. “I hope they drive with their windows down, I hope they listen on a walk and their pace quickens, I hope they get goosebumps, I hope they listen on a run and run faster than they can! But I also hope they remember that we all make mistakes and with honesty we can always make something better.”

Truth be told, I never stood a chance against a song called “Jessica.” But names alone don’t make music glow like this. Cullen does that himself – with a towering falsetto, a show-stopping performance, and enough conviction to make three-and-a-half minutes of folk-pop feel like sunlight breaking through after a long winter. “Jessica” is an irresistible rush of motion and hope, the kind of romantic reverie that makes you want to run straight to the one you love.

And in my house, I know exactly who I’m running to.

Love becomes a life through repetition – the coffee poured without asking, the bottle of wine opened at night, the same streets driven together, the songs forever welded to a first kiss.

Wistful, heartfelt, and tenderly sun-drenched, Marfa’s “If It Ain’t You” aches for exactly that kind of intimacy, tracing the space one person leaves behind when they’ve become inseparable from the rituals of everyday life. “I’m still getting used to all the songs we would kiss to / I don’t think I want it, baby, if it ain’t you,” Bryce Menchaca and Kellen Wall sing, their voices melting together in breathtaking harmony. Sweet, sentimental, and steeped in longing, the duo’s dreamy indie folk reverie carries the golden warmth of ’70s Americana through radiant vocal stacks and rosy, glistening lead guitar work that curls around every edge. The music practically blushes even as their words look backward, creating an enchanting soundtrack to devotion, desire, and the heartache of realizing that home can sometimes be a person.

Released in late March via Ascend Music / Big Machine Label Group as Marfa’s second release of the year, “If It Ain’t You” captures the Texas-raised, Colorado-forged duo at their most unabashedly romantic. Menchaca and Wall recently relocated to Nashville after building their name on harmony-rich Americana and indie rock shaped by The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Glen Campbell, J.J. Cale, and the lush, golden lineage of Laurel Canyon. Their music carries the worn comfort of another era without becoming trapped inside it: Old-school songcraft meets a contemporary instinct for texture, melody, and emotional immediacy. Already veterans of the road alongside The Head and The Heart and Wild Rivers, Marfa are now pushing deeper into what they call “abstract harmony stacks and more personable lyrics” – and “If It Ain’t You” makes both ambitions unmistakable.

The song itself arrived almost before they had time to second-guess it. Facing a Nashville studio session the following morning, Marfa wanted to walk in with an idea rather than build one from scratch. They began writing around 11:30 p.m.; by midnight, the voice memo was finished.

“We wanted a song that hit similar to the ‘70s love ballads of Glen Campbell, in the sense that the production was fuller and the chord progression that was more clever than a typical pop song,” the duo explain. “We had written and released a number of songs that were about Kellen’s ex-girlfriend who cheated on him, and [we] needed to make some love songs. Around 11:30pm, we got going on this song, and around midnight, we had a voice memo and were ready to go.”

That spontaneity survives intact in the finished recording. “If It Ain’t You” never sounds labored over; it drifts with the natural ease of a memory resurfacing, its harmonies feathering outward while the guitar gleams through the arrangement like late-afternoon light. The lyrics work the same way. Marfa resist grand romantic gestures and instead build their declaration from domestic details: “If it ain’t you that I’m taking home each night / looking in your eyes, gettin’ in my bed / drinkin’ all my red and white wine… If it ain’t you that I’m waking up next to, pouring your coffee.” Wine gives way to morning coffee; one night folds into the next day. Those small acts accumulate until they become the clearest possible definition of devotion. Even the song’s hurt lives in ordinary geography: “Slow down, see you / when I walk the streets that look the same / they change the name to memory lane.” Once love has colored the world, absence cannot simply bleach it clean.

“I think in that chorus, we wanted the melody to have a motific and dreamy feel to it, and the lyrics to do the heavy lifting,” Marfa share. “The idea that you can pour someone a glass of wine and a cup of coffee over the course of a day or so speaks to the notion that you’d do anything for someone, even the little things.”

Those little things are precisely why “If It Ain’t You” lands so deeply. Marfa have written a love song about certainty without mistaking certainty for spectacle; the promise lives in showing up again tomorrow morning. And because the arrangement surrounds that sentiment in luminous harmonies and honeyed guitar lines, longing itself takes on a strange sweetness – memory stings, but it also preserves. The duo hope listeners might fall in love to this song, walk down the aisle to it, or attach it forever to one person and one season of their lives. That possibility completes the song’s emotional circle: Marfa begin with memories already encoded in music, singing about all the songs we would kiss to, then release another song capable of becoming somebody else’s.

“The moment we release a song, it becomes an object to people, and it will remind them of specific times in their life or remind them of specific people,” they reflect. “We all have those songs that mean the world to us, and it definitely helps the songwriting process to think this could be someone’s special song for a first dance at a wedding or a song that reminds someone of a love that’s passed them by.”

“If It Ain’t You” is ready for exactly that life beyond its makers. Rosy, harmony-soaked, and impossibly sweet without losing the bruise underneath, Marfa’s latest captures love in the places where it actually lives: In beds and kitchens, bottles and coffee cups, city streets and old songs, and the person whose presence gives all of those ordinary things their meaning.

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