South East Londoner Kai Kwasi made his debut just last year, introducing us to his hazy soundscapes with "unt". He continues to mould a unique space for his sound with his newest track "Jugular", taken from his upcoming debut project Jalilah.

This delicate number is co-produced by Kai himself along with Sam Breathwick and Dom Valentino. Faraway vocals and stretched-out string notes rise and fall in dynamics, creating a mind-altering backdrop for Kai's velvet-tone vocals as he makes a seamless transition to a spoken-word verse.

Speaking on the track's inception, Kai shares: "'Jugular' is one of the first tracks I wrote outside of my own bedroom, making music had been a really insular practice up until then. I was itching to work with other musicians, but had to get over this kinda barrier of learning to write and perform in front of people, which is kinda like learning to be vulnerable out loud. I was at Dom Valentino's old bedroom studio in Brockley and he made it feel really easy to get out of my head and take the session in whichever direction I wanted.

"This was the winter after lockdown, a lot going on internally and externally sometimes you kinda get numb to it. It starts off quite heavy and dark and I wanted to lose some of that cynicism by the end. I think pessimism is symptomatic of things being shit, it's a feeling that’s easy to arrive at and hard to shake off. Sometimes I need a person or a practice to drag me out of that and at that time music became that for me. I think the second verse is a reflection of that."

Luring listeners into his realm of thoughts, he evokes more than enough emotion for us to stay locked in for the duration. The track ends with a loving voicemail from his grandma whom his upcoming EP is named after, expected to land in November.

Hit play on the self-directed and edited visuals for "Jugular" below.