“Light”

Abhi//Dijon’s new single, “Light,” is the product of a resurrection. The Maryland R&B duo of Abhi Raju and Dijon Duenas lost much of the material meant to follow up their 2016 EP, Montana, after failing to back up some files. But rather than give into the grief of losing all that work, they decided to channel it into “Light,” a ghostly R&B demo as full of life as any as their properly finished songs. They wrote on SoundCloud that it’s “a monument to not backing up your data.”

Guitars creep and crawl through a reverb fog, and the vocals are mumbled in a way that suggests unfinished thoughts. It’s vacant and lonely, but as the duo stumbles around in darkness, they eventually land on something that resembles a chorus—a refrain of, simply, “Don’t break on me now.” Eventually, it speeds up, then collapses like a tape unraveling. The beat stops, the clouds of reverb break, and an acoustic guitar and unaffected voice emerge from the darkness, singing a sunnier, simpler love song. The entirety of “Light” feels like a lesson in persistence: Even when loss surrounds you, if you dig in your heels, you can still find joy.