Baltimore-based artist Ian Mugerwa, known as Dawuna, is a first-generation Ugandan-American from the South making music that smoulders — glitched neo-soul, silky vocals, lyrics that sit with existential questions rather than answer them. Today he’s back with a new mixtape, African Family Laptop Musick, and news that he’s found a new label home at True Panther Records. It follows his critically acclaimed 2021 album Glass Lit Dream (the Guardian called it a “masterpiece”) and 2024’s Naya. With every release, Dawuna keeps sharpening a sound that’s hard to pin down — hazy, lo-fi, deeply personal, always a little out of reach, which is part of what makes it so magnetic.

Here’s Dawuna on how the mixtape came together: “I was healing from a traumatic head injury that gave me a later amnesia diagnosis, so I don’t remember more than a couple small flashes of memory from the recording/construction of this project. I know I wanted to make a low-fidelity concept piece about my family life at the time, compositionally simple, but necessarily abstracted. This is the last lil offering from a very personal side of myself before I give y’all something big. Enjoy.”

Since his debut, Dawuna has become one of the quiet frontrunners of avant-garde’s newest wave, taking his live show — hypnagogic, unpredictable, kind of hard to describe unless you’ve seen it — to spots like London’s ICA and Cafe OTO, Utrecht’s Le Guess Who?, and Manchester’s The White Hotel. He’s built the kind of following that comes from people who like their music a little unresolved, somewhere between confession and abstraction.

More new music is on the way later this summer.

Dawuna

African Family Laptop Musick

Tracklist

1. I am a Woman too…
2. Obulesi
3. Family Trauma/Drama
4. Fumagombe
5. Pressure
6. Proud Father
7. Bipolar Memory
8. Need You In My Life
9. Grabba Boy Problem
10. Lunyole
11. Undo This Damage

Listen to the mixtape here and grab a limited-edition vinyl copy exclusively through Boomkat here.