Chris Cohen’s songs initially sound easy. They’re each tiny jewels that unfurl at a leisurely pace, but dig a little deeper and you’ll reach a melancholy core. His previous albums — 2012’s Overgrown Path, 2016’s As If Apart and 2019’s Self Titled — were built from lush, blurry tracks that embedded themselves in your subconscious, like they’d always been there.

Paint a Room (out July 12, 2024) is his first album in five years and his debut for Hardly Art. If Cohen’s meanings have previously lurked inside the tessellated musical layers he built alone, they are newly clear and resonant here, animated and underscored for the first time by a band playing in real time. This is Cohen communicating with friends not only through his deep understanding of groove, harmony, and hook but also with his listeners through songs that croon of our uneasy little era.

Chris was a member of Deerhoof, The Curtains, Cryptacize and Natural Dreamers before releasing music under his own name. He’s toured and/or recorded with Kurt Vile, White Magic, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Danielson, Cass McCombs, as well as produced and engineered records by Weyes Blood, Fievel Is Glauque, Gun Outfit, Sam Evian, Marina Allen, Le Ren, and many more.