R&B for People Who Stare Out of Windows
Five songs about leaving, staying, and lying about which one you're doing. Headphones and emotional honesty recommended, starring Mack Keane, Sasha Keable, Joji, Charlotte Day Wilson, and Arlo Parks.
Welcome to the weekly Soulpolitan feature, where we highlight a handful of new tracks catching our attention, along with others you should check out. There’s a moment on the Joji and Giveon duet where Giveon drops in, and the whole song physically shifts. His verse counts the rain, counts the storms, counts the clearing, and he gets through four consecutive rhymes without any of them sounding forced. That kind of quiet showmanship runs through all five of this week’s picks. Mack Keane thinks he fell in love, but doesn’t think they’ve got enough. Charlotte Day Wilson asks for time to un-happen. Sasha Keable tosses off a hook with the cadence of a text to a friend. Arlo Parks turns a club night into a series of flashing images. Five songs worth sitting with.
Mack Keane, “Ordinary Feelings”
There’s a moment in the pre-chorus where the song nearly buckles under its own uncertainty. Keane has been sitting in a low, unbothered verse about seeing someone and getting too anxious to stay still, and then he blurts, “I think we fell in love/But I don’t really think we’ve got enough.” The word “think” doing double duty there, first as hope and then as doubt, and he delivers the whole thing rushed, a little winded, the way you say something true before you can talk yourself out of it. The chorus only asks for one more day together. “No pressure,” he adds, which is a lie the melody contradicts. He repeats the request until it wears thin and starts to feel like a permanent condition. Keane is an L.A. singer raised in his father’s home studio, the grandson of Del-Fi Records founder Bob Keane. He studied at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute and spent years putting out EPs named after streets from his childhood. None of that prepares you for how small he’s willing to play here. The second verse gets even more painfully specific. “We’ve got too caught up in trying to fit inside our promise,” he sings, and then calls the feeling “sentimental” like he’s embarrassed by it. No qualifier, no save. Just the admission and the silence after it. — Phil
Sasha Keable, “Heal Something”
Between certain years, Sasha Keable nearly disappeared. She’d been co-signed early by Disclosure and DJ Zinc, had her name in UK R&B conversations by twenty, and then lost her management, lost her label, and spent years rebuilding alone. Since 2019, dropped the Intermission EP with Jorja Smith in 2021, and ran through four singles in 2024 alone, including "Take Your Time" with 6LACK and “Why,” which Beyoncé name-checked in a GQ interview. The Act Right EP landed in mid-2025, which is one of our favorite EPs of that year.
“Heal Something,” from her new project ACT II, carries zero residue from any of that. The beat bounces and Keable sits right on top of it, tossing out lines with a looseness that makes the hook lodge before you notice it sticking. “You got powers/Stay up late night after hours/I’ve been kissed by a flower/Tell the whole world about her.” Four quick images, no connective tissue, each one arriving and moving on before it can get precious. She treats the verse the same way, rattling through “Come back, come back, that’s what my heart says/Whenever you say that you can’t stay/It’s mayday, mayday, we need vacay, vacays” with the cadence of someone texting a friend, not recording a single. — Murffey Zavier
Charlotte Day Wilson, “If Only”
The live instrumentation carries almost nothing on it. A few spare piano chords, long silences between them, and Wilson alone in all that empty air, which means every quiet shift she makes hits bare. “Been so long, the feeling is gone, can’t/Wait to get it back,” she sings. She’s talking about a relationship that’s already over and she knows it, but the chorus keeps pleading anyway. “Heaven, if only you could hold me/And turn it all around/Tell me the time comes back.” She’s asking for time itself to reverse, which is a request nobody can grant, and the melody stays low and patient enough that the impossibility just quietly compounds. Wilson produced the track herself, returning to writing alone in her room after outside hands shaped her 2024 Grammy-nominated record. Fewer parts, fewer places to hide. — Jamila W.
Joji & Giveon, “Piece of You”
Two voices, two different altitudes. Joji floats high and thinned out, barely present, half-swallowed by the mix. Giveon drops in with a baritone that presses down and physically changes the air. They never adjust to meet each other, and the gap between them is the whole point. The chorus lays it out plain. “All the constellations, they no longer hold a piece of you/Now I can finally say that I stopped looking for that piece of you.” Joji sings it soft, almost affectless, like the relief hasn’t fully caught up to him yet.
Then Giveon’s verse tightens the focus and gets specific. “Three or four times, I’m not even sure/Can’t do love now without all the back and forth/Rain kept coming down, but I liked your pour/Sky’s so clear without you in your storm.” That’s four consecutive end rhymes delivered without any of them sounding forced, and the weather imagery does real work. The rain was the relationship, while the clearing was the absence. And “I liked your pour” is a strange, knotty admission tucked inside a breakup song. He liked the damage while it was happening. Giveon flips the title phrase at the end of his verse. “Now you’re looking for a piece of me/I can’t be peace for you now.” Kenneth Blume (formerly Kenny Beats), Sevn Thomas, Jahaan Sweet, NinetyFour, and Lily Kaplan produced the track for Joji’s fourth album, and they built something that drags its feet without collapsing. The whole thing slips past before you can grab hold of it. — Kendra Vale
Arlo Parks, “Heaven”
A friend was DJing a pop-up under the Sixth Street Viaduct in Los Angeles one night in November 2024, and Arlo Parks was in the crowd. The friend was Kelly Lee Owens. Caribou was involved. Parks has said the night stuck with her, and “Heaven” is what came out of it. The song runs on a techno bassline that never lets up and a drum pattern drawn from the Caribou and Jamie xx remixes of Radiohead’s The King of Limbs, filtered through keys Parks has credited to Duval Timothy and Sampha. It sits a long way from the fingerpicked songs on Collapsed in Sunbeams, her Mercury Prize-winning 2021 debut.
Instead of interior monologues, Parks inventories a night out in concrete fragments. “Bodies in the summer breeze/Concrete washing with metallic green/Let’s get involved.” Then later, swapping one detail for another. “Diet Coke and kitten heels/My friends spilling out into the streets/Let’s get involved.” Same structure, different contents, the repetition mimicking how a good night blurs into a series of flashing impressions. The song’s central question arrives midway through and barely announces itself. “Are you letting go, or do you just want time to freeze?/Well I think sometimes, it’s both.” That “both” is the whole record’s thesis crammed into a single syllable, and Parks tosses it off before the drums swallow it back up.
She said she danced more while making Ambiguous Desire, her upcoming third album due April 3 through Transgressive, and burned through nights at New York juke parties. “Heaven” pins that sensation to paper. Parks has written for Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and opened for Billie Eilish and Harry Styles, and now she’s chanting “let’s get involved, let’s get involved” until the dawn breaks. — Tai Lawson
R&B Albums Released This Week to Check Out
Ella Mai: Do You Still Love Me?
Joji: Piss in the Wind
Puma Blue: Croak Dream
Charlotte Day Wilson: Patchwork (EP)
RAAHiiM: PRAY FOR ME
Aquakultre: 1783
Dina Ögon: Människobarn
TIA RAY: NEW DAY
Joelle James: iSCREAM Scoop 2 (EP)
Kareen Lomax: ijan (EP)
Jaymin: Sweet Nothings (EP)
LaVoyce: Normal: How You Been? (EP)
Luke Chiang: TYPHOON
Gimba: She (EP)
Kayla Brianna: Lover Girl (EP)
Other R&B Songs to Check Out
Akexia Jayy: Feels Right
KAMAUU: Shine (Like This)
Shelailai: Pickup
Ariel J & DJ Miss Milan: We Still Dance
Ace Clark: Like I Luv You (feat. BJ the Chicago Kid)
Olivia Escuyos: Tonight
Dom Jones: The Blacker Berry
N’shai Iman: Bait
Victory: Just Friends
MarcLo: Interest
Nbdy: EMPTY PROMISES
JEDSOUL: COME AROUND
Babble Hume: Julia
Zach Zoya, High Klassified & Gäelle: Precious
Justin Radford: Pray With
Tym: Make Things Right
Galdive: 20 Weeks
Avara: potion no. 4
Bryant Barnes: Don’t Dream It’s Over
Jamie Rose: Risky
Kumail: Tear It Off (feat. Fly Anakin)
Lex Aura: Consequences
Eldana: Don’t Sell My Love
Noa Lauryn, FENNE & Mitchelle Yard: Galaxy
JAWAN.mp3: Truth
Alicia Creti: No One’s Business
Abby Jasmine: Below Zero
Marques Houston: Her Side of the Bed
William Singe: Cut Loose
Naesia: 5 Stars
Kem & Boney James: Give My Love (Boney James Joy & Pain Remix)
Rashad: Back to Brazil