In those years away from home, Khruangbin’s members often felt like they were swimming underwater, unsure of where they were going, or why they were going there.

But more than anything, the album became a celebration of Houston, the eclectic city that had nurtured them, and a cultural nexus where you can check out country and zydeco, trap rap, or avant-garde opera on any given night. Musically, the band’s ever-restless ear saw it pulling reference points from Pakistan, Korea, and West Africa, incorporating strains of Indian chanting boxes and Congolese syncopated guitar. But they were also determined to slow down, to take their time and luxuriate in building something together.

They returned to their farmhouse studio in Burton, Texas, ready to begin work on their third album. And it all started with them coming home.īy the summer of 2019, the Houston group-bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, guitarist Mark Speer, drummer DJ Johnson-had been on tour for nearly three-and-a-half years, playing to audiences across North and South America, Europe, and southeast Asia behind its acclaimed albums The Universe Smiles Upon You and Con Todo El Mundo. It’s a shift that rewards the risk, reorienting Khruangbin’s transportive sound toward a new sense of emotional directness, without losing the spirit of nomadic wandering that’s always defined it. But on its third album, it’s finally speaking out loud. Mordechai features vocals prominently on nearly every song, a first for the mostly instrumental band. Khruangbin has always been multilingual, weaving far-flung musical languages like East Asian surf-rock, Persian funk, and Jamaican dub into mellifluous harmony.

Khruangbin santa fe opera