R&B up-and-comer Jamila Woods’ third album, Water Made Us, is an exercise in warmth. Over 12 tracks and 5 spoken-word interludes, the singer and poet maps feelings of self-love, reliance, forgiveness, and healing. Going so far as to even, on one track, admit the aspects she misses in all her exes in an effort to learn something from each one, no matter how small. “Drive me to the waterfall, who don’t believe what I say about the stars, but listen anyway,” she says.

Tracking a relationship through its ebbs and flows, the first three songs demonstrate the back-and-forth that comes with two coexisting people having their own separate opinions and habits. “Bugs”, the opener, sees Jamila brunting the costs of a lover’s high expectations, but “Tiny Garden” posits love as something to nurture: “It’s not gonna be a big production / It’s not butterflies or fireworks / It’s gonna be a tiny garden / But I’ll feed it everyday.” “Practice,” too, continues the garden metaphor as she sings of two people early on in the process, who help each other when they make mistakes and don’t make too much of it. “Tomatoes and marigolds, they’ll help each other grow / I hope this seat’s not taken, I just wanna share the sun with you,” she sings.

Elsewhere, she envisions the end, while still keeping in mind the good moments: “Here comes the flood, I’ll save a place for you / And when it’s all done, I hope you send a dove,” she sings with a choir backing her. On the album’s sparsest track, “Wreckage Room”, she begs time to save her for the hurt she feels currently, and on the catchy “Wolfsheep”, she lambasts herself for trusting someone who doesn’t want the best for her (“Hindsight I see so clearly / You did a number on me.”) Taking a small instance and extrapolating it such that only a poet can, “Thermostat” examines the politics of compromise, leaving the temperature in the house at a neutral 72. “What are we really fighting for?” she asks in the outro, “Nail me to your cross or use those nails to fix a home.”

And then the healing. The last third of Water Made Us is dedicated to self-analysis and reflection, either from the broken shards of a past relationship or a need to fix one’s ways. Over low-key Afrobeats, “Backburner” uses one’s negative traits as a wake-up call — “My jealousy is teaching me the empty cups that needs filling,” she sings. “Still” dissects the difficult parts of building oneself back up (“I say my prayers every day / I’m healing more and more these days / I’d like to think I’m worthy of something”), and there’s still room for fun on the upbeat “Boomerang,” where she taunts someone into dancing with her. The closing track, “Headfirst,” reflects on the idea that loving yourself should be an all-in battle, when, in reality, it might take time to get there. “Come in, the water’s warm,” she persuades a new lover, “I know my heart is slow / But I won’t leave you.”

Jamila Woods is as solid a storyteller as she is a singer, and her newest record is an honest reflection at all parts of our psyche, good or bad, self-sabotaging or brought on by others. Empathetic, vulnerable, and caring, Water Made Us will surely be a timeless record helpful to anyone in the throes of grief or the oddities of being alive.

Order Water Made Us HERE.