There’s a particular kind of homesickness that only shows up once you’ve already left. Not for a place, necessarily — for a version of yourself that existed there, briefly, with someone who isn’t around anymore. That’s the feeling Kiey bottles up on ‘phan thiet,’ the lead single off his upcoming third album METROMIRAGE. The title is unassuming. Just the name of a beach town on Vietnam’s south-central coast, no embellishment, no English translation tacked on for context.

Nostalgic, Dreamy, Introspective

-PurpleMistress

But drop the needle and what plays back sounds far from local — a wash of dream pop haze and R&B undertow with an unmistakably international pull to it. The song moves like memory does: nonlinear, softened at the edges, more feeling than fact. A young man drifts back through a coastal trip with a woman he loved — the kind of recollection that gets warmer and hazier each time it’s replayed, until it stops being about what actually happened and starts being about what it meant. I recommend it to everyone who needs music for the heart and soul!