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 just heard from her when she dropped her EP this past April, 80s Baby. Now she’s right back with another installment in her beat tape series, Beat Tape? Vol. 3.

Beat Tape? Vol. 1 dropped back in December of 2019. Back then, K.Raydio was still relatively new to production, so she had pushed herself to make five beats a week for the whole year, and then picked some of her favorites from this exercise to see the light of day. Beat Tape? Vol. 2 came out in September of last year, the result of turning to beat making as a source of happiness while living through lockdown and an uprising in her home town. Now, as she release Vol. 3, K.Raydio gets ready to move to Chicago and begin another chapter of her life, and we get the final volume of this series. With Vol. 3, there is a certain melancholy mood to a lot of the beats, along with some tender and sweet moments, but most importantly, it’s also some of her most experimental beats. She’s stretching her legs on this volume, trying out different styles of beats, and switching things up and playing with different ways to develop the beats as they progress. It might not be most accessible or straightforward of the volumes, but it’s the most interesting in terms of just opening up possibilities. Not every single beat is all the way there, necessarily, but each one is going off in interesting directions and K.Raydio is clearly trying to not just settle in for the basic, formulaic groove.

Beat Tape? Vol. 3 is interesting, because it’s closing a chapter in K.Raydio’s life and musical career, but it also feels like a transitional release, like the music is in flux. It will be interesting to see where the music picks up from here.