K.Raydio is a vocalist, producer, and songwriter from Minneapolis. She has been putting out music for over a decade now, collaborating with artists like O-D and Shrimpnose along the way. Most recently, we heard from her last September, when she dropped Beat Tape? Vol. 2. Now she’s back with a new EP, 80s Baby.

It’s wild to think that just a few years ago, K.Raydio was a vocalist who was just starting to learn how to produce beats. I say that because when you listen to 80s Baby, every single aspect of this EP sounds so effortlessly executed at such a high level, you’d never know that one came before the other. There’s only four songs here, but K.Raydio is giving us such a varied and well-developed looks, it really feels like a substantial listening experience each time through. K.Raydio has always had a really strong and soulful voice that could carry a song, but now she’s incorporating harmonies and backing vocals into the production like their additional instruments. She’s also moving effortlessly between pop, soul, hip hop, gospel, and R&B, often times mixing them all into her own personal style. As a songwriter, she’s giving you some of her most personal material, from the self-reflexive “20 Years,” in which she writes a letter to her future self. She then moves to the reflection on all the recent conflict within her hometown on “Nothin,” placing herself and her lived experiences square in the middle, really forcing you to feel the pain that she feels as she watches the city burn. She does all of this with a great sense of pop song structure, vocal arrangements, and a less-is-more approach to her production that fits perfectly.

As good as 80s Baby is, and it is one of her best all-around releases so far, the best part is that K.Raydio has released this EP with the promise that this is just the preview to a bigger project coming later this year. If that’s true, this EP is one hell of a lead-in.