COYOTE

Tommy Richman's "COYOTE" is stranger and more interesting than his breakthrough single — a production that flirts with glitchy experimental R&B textures while keeping one foot in something warm and groove-based. The title animal works as an apt metaphor: something wild that has learned to operate on the edges of civilization, scrappy and adaptable. His falsetto here takes on a slightly different character, more controlled in places, which actually makes the moments where he lets it go feel more deliberate and therefore more impactful. The lyric builds an interior landscape of restless hunger — wanting, moving, refusing to be pinned down — delivered with the knowing swagger of someone who has figured out that the wanting itself might be the point. The production details reward close listening: there are small textural elements buried in the mix that reveal themselves on the third or fourth pass, suggesting a care for craft that the song's casual energy conceals on first encounter. This is music for the drive home at 3 a.m. when you're not quite ready for the night to end, full of the particular alertness that comes from being fully awake when everyone else is asleep.