Swapped files, shared songs and simultaneous sentiments have long held Hovvdy together – even when spatially apart. Upon meeting back in 2014, Charlie Martin and Will Taylor combined separate songwriting sketches into the same big picture, emerging as a stronghold of the Texas indie scene.

The pair connected over shared sports-centric upbringings in Dallas and, most prominently, likeminded batches of solo songwriting. The interlocking tracks would become 2016 LP Taster, introducing a comforting sonic push-and-pull continued in the innate melodies of Cranberry (2018) and the propulsive storytelling of breakthrough Heavy Lifter (2019).

Fourth album True Love (2021), co-produced by the genre-morphing Andrew Sarlo, followed a surprisingly folksy and beautifully determined course, just hinting at the lo-fi layers of the project’s DIY origins. Followed by the 2022 EP billboard for my feeling, whose title offers a wry slogan for the openhearted sonic universe Hovvdy has built, true-blue sincere but never overly sentimental. Tapping an instinctual outlook, the collage-like EP pulls colorfully from modes of previous records.

Now based in Nashville and St. Louis, the duo ensures their music stays rooted in Texas, tied by friends, family and memory – perhaps the heaviest elemental through line in the band’s prolific catalogue.