I’ve known about Khruangbin since around 2019. I didn’t go looking for them. I don’t really do that with music. They showed up anyway. Like some stray dog that decides you’re it's person.
The first record I really listened to was Con Todo el Mundo. Before that it was scraps, live clips, YouTube footage, half-paying attention. Once it clicked, it stayed clicked.
You have to admire a few things right away.
One: the brutal simplicity; guitar, bass, drums, nothing extra.
Two: committing fully to a dry, locked on wah tone and never apologizing for it.
Three: the apparent refusal to change guitar strings more than once per tour, if that. There’s discipline in that kind of neglect. It may be a myth.
There are other reasons I like them. The music, obviously. The quiet weirdness that hangs over every performance. Do I understand what they’re doing? No. And I don’t think that matters. Maybe the best way to explain them is to say why a reasonable person might keep listening.
You know it’s Khruangbin in about ten seconds. Earth seconds. No delay. The guitar is thin and sunburned. The bass is elastic and upfront. The drums are loose but never lazy. It feels familiar even when it isn’t, like remembering a place you’ve never been. Deja Vu surf funk.
This is instrumental music that refuses to be wallpaper. There are few vocals, sometimes none, yet it still feels deliberate, emotional, like something is being said. Not supermarket music. Though I have heard them played in a Tesco, which felt wrong in a way I can’t quite explain.
The global influences are obvious but never desperate. Thai funk, dub, Middle Eastern scales, soul, surf rock, psychedelia. They don’t steal. They don’t show their work. It just passes through them and comes out clean.
They make perfect music for a certain kind of living. Night driving. Low-stakes work. Sitting still. Substances, if that’s your thing. Hanging out without needing to talk. Zoning out without disappearing. Spanning deserts, wilderness and still, bare rooms. Khruangbin fits all of it, which is harder than it sounds.
Laura Lee’s bass is the center of the band's gravity. The lines are melodic, confident, loud enough to matter. People come for the bass and stay for everything else. There’s a calm authority in how she holds the band together. No tension. No drama. Just forward motion.
Donald Johnson (DJ) makes restraint look easy. It isn’t. The grooves are precise, stripped down, unforgiving. No showing off. No wasted hits. Space everywhere, and that space is where the music actually lives.
They’re relaxed without being dull. The songs don’t sprawl or collapse. There’s always swing underneath, small shifts, quiet momentum. You feel it more than you hear it.
The look matters too. The peculiar wig thing image. The stage clothes. The album art. The stillness playing live. It’s cohesive and strange and memorable. It felt important at the start. I don’t know where it goes next, or how much it really matters in the long run. There’s a fine line between icon and costume.
They reward repeat listening. I'm not bored with them, but I don’t binge either. Too much would ruin it. Each listen reveals something small; a fill, a tone change, a rhythmic turn. The music deepens instead of wearing out.
Most of all, they feel sincere. No irony. No smirking distance. No contempt for the listener. Just three musicians locked in, enjoying the sound they’re making. That kind of honesty is rare, it spreads.
Where are they going next?
I don’t know.
That’s fine by me.
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