It happened on a Saturday in April 2013. A handful of songs dropped on Bandcamp and no one really knew what to do. Jaws were agape, articles were written, and people were in a rush to announce these strange tracks—some holy mix of Prince and Burial and who knows what else—were the best they’d ever heard. It didn’t matter that you could barely make out a single word Jai Paul was saying. It was just clear that this stuff was so good and so original. Then, just as quickly, the album worth of material disappeared, and its remnants were passed around like samizdat to whoever who would listen, venerated and coveted.

Six years later, on another Saturday, it happened again, with two luminous new songs billed as a double B-side: “Do You Love Her Now” and “He.” Along with these two songs, which Jai Paul said he was working on at the time of the leak, he also officially released the leaked demos as Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones), along with a 1500-word text document that provided some answers to a long-standing mystery: a London police investigation, a burned CD, the trauma, therapy, the Paul Institute, and that long-awaited triumphant return.

Few musicians have the kind of cachet as Jai Paul. He makes the kind of music you drop everything and anything to listen to. I was at a birthday party in the middle of the afternoon and left the scene to retreat into a bathroom to let Jai’s coos and wash reverb to flood my ears. Both his new songs—amalgamations of R&B slow jams, soft rock bliss, and rousing spirituals—should elicit a warmth that can melt any brand of cynicism. “Do You Love Her Now” is perhaps the more dazzling of the pair. It works in multiple scales and registers, somehow both big enough to fill a stadium with the clamor of its bawdy guitar lines that open it up. But then there’s a closeness to it too, that comes from Fabiana Palladino’s aching lines about waiting for love to come to you and the hush of the quiet storm synths. In the middle of it all is Jai, cooing in his falsetto. Behind the chug of the guitars, a funk-tight snare, and the lilt of his soaring voice, Jai Paul conjures that sweet feeling of love, glowing and generous.