Like You

"Like You" by Parekh & Singh arrives wrapped in pastel melancholy, the Kolkata duo's signature dream-pop confection from their 2016 debut *Ocean*. Nischay Parekh's guitar work is all clean, chiming arpeggios and jazz-tinged chords, recorded with a deliberate softness that recalls Wild Nothing or a more wistful Mac DeMarco, while Jivraj Singh's drumming stays gentle and brushed, never breaking the reverie. Parekh sings in an airy, boyish falsetto, his diction precise and unhurried, every syllable floating just above the mix as though sung underwater. The lyrics trace the ache of admiration and longing — wanting to be near someone, to be *like* them — rendered with an innocent, almost childlike sincerity that sidesteps cliché through sheer earnestness. There's a distinctly cinematic, Wes Anderson quality to the whole enterprise (their videos lean openly into that symmetry and color), a curated nostalgia that feels both Indian and transnational, part of a generation of English-singing South Asian indie acts unbothered by Bollywood's gravity. The emotional weather is bittersweet but warm, a sunlit sadness. Best heard alone on a slow afternoon, headphones on, watching dust drift through window light — music for reverie, for gentle heartache, for the kind of daydreaming that doesn't want to be interrupted.