How to Dress Well

mp3: How to Dress Well "My Body"
mp3: How to Dress Well "Ready for the World"

How to Dress Well is a new but absurdly prolific project between a dude in Brooklyn and a dude in Köln. Together, these guys are making the among the most exciting R&B in the world. And in the past couple of months, they have quietly dropped six (6!!) EPs, all of which you can grab for free over at their blog.

They have described themselves as a lo-fi Shai. It's a really accurate and appropriate description: HTDW swaddles his silky falsetto in reverb and tape hiss and paper thin drum machines. But unlike Shai (and H-Town and Boyz-2-Men), HDTW has removed all the scented candles and sweaty chests and hyperbolic declarations of love from contemporary R&B. In their place, we get a mysterious crooner who sounds as dark and remote as the music. While the vocals are stunning (the guys sounds remarkably like Justin Vernon), the music marks another salvo for avant-garde R&B. Between Bon Iver and The XX, R&B is taking a healthy turn toward the interesting again. As long as D'Angelo is wrapped up with his complicated demons, we've got How to Dress Well's avant-garde R&B to keep us warm.

I cannot recommend How to Dress Well enough. I'm very excited to see more from these guys. They have another (!) EP coming out next week. Please go support them here.