Khruangbin & Leon Bridges have announced Texas Sun, their forthcoming collaboration will arrive February 7th via Dead Oceans, in partnership with Columbia Records and Night Time Stories Ltd. Along with the announcement, they present its title track. Over a slowly rolling backbeat and strums of flamenco-style guitar, Bridges sings of the pull the unique Texan landscape can have on you, even from miles away.

From Khruangbin’s Laura Lee:

“Big sky country, that’s what they call Texas,” Lee says. Texas Sun effortlessly evokes the feeling of being behind the wheel, nothing but that big sky before you, your mind set free to wander. It’s a sound that should keep you good company on your own winding roads, wherever they may lead, and always back home.

Texas Sun is the kind of record made for listening with the windows down and the road humming softly beneath you. Their first time writing with a vocalist, Texas Sun finds Khruangbin—formed of Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar, and Donald “DJ” Johnson on drums—tailoring their exotic funk to Bridges’ soulful melodies. On the EP, these Texas natives meet up somewhere in the mythical nexus of the state’s past, present, and future—a dreamy badlands where genres blur as seamlessly as the terrain. The state’s music is as varied and wild as its geography, producing Southern rap pioneers Geto Boys and UGK, lysergic trailblazers The 13th Floor Elevators, and genres-unto-themselves like St. Vincent, Gary Clark Jr., and Beyoncé. Texas Sun lives here too, a record that calls equally to the chopped-and-screwed hip-hop fans rattling slabs on the southside of Houston, to those who grew up on listening to both mariachi and post-hardcore out on the Mexican borders of El Paso, to the Austin acid-dropping art school kids. All of these things overlap on Texas Sun in a multicolored melange, purple hues as vivid and unpredictable as one of the state’s rightfully celebrated sunsets.

Texas Sun started on the road and wrapped up in the studio. Both Bridges and Khruangbin had been touring nonstop behind their sophomore LPs when their paths converged for a joint North American tour in 2018, a run of shows stretching from Los Angeles to New York.

Khruangbin
Texas Sun
Tracklist:

1. Texas Sun
2. Midnight
3. C-Side
4. Conversion