Sun & Moon: Leon Bridges Reunites with Khruangbin for Follow-Up EP

Leon Bridges has announced his second collaboration with the atmospheric Houston trio Khruangbin — an EP entitled Texas Moon that’s scheduled for release Feb. 18 via Dead Oceans. The project serves as a follow-up to the collaborators’ first EP, 2020’s Texas Sun.

“Without joy, there can be no real perspective on sorrow,” Khruangbin said of Texas Moon via press release. “Without sunlight, all this rain keeps things from growing. How can you have the sun without the moon?”

The announcement was accompanied by the release of the EP’s first single, “B-Side,” along with a music video. Directed by Philip Andelman, the video depicts Bridges and Khruangbin putting their own unique spin on the spaghetti western genre, facing off against each other before finally coming together to perform as a unit.

Texas Moon will also feature four additional tracks — “Chocolate Hills,” “Father Father,” “Mariella” and “Doris,” which tells the story of Bridges’ grandmother’s passing and her journey across realms.

“It’s like a short story,” Khruangbin’s Laura Lee says of Texas Moon. “And it leaves room to continue having these stories together. It’s not Khruangbin, it’s not Leon — it’s this world we created together.”

Bridges and Khruangbin first teamed up to release Texas Sun in February last year. Four months later, Khruangbin released its third studio album, Mordechai, the band’s first to prominently feature vocals, with influences from West Africa, India, Vietnam, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Mexico. Lee says the goal of the album was to sound like “the world, rather than any one particular part of the world,” while acknowledging Houston — and its diversity — for encouraging the band’s expansive sonic palette.

Bridges, meanwhile, released his third studio album, Gold-Diggers Sound, in July. The album received a pair of Grammy nominations: for Best R&B Album and for Best Traditional R&B Performance for “Born Again,” featuring Houston’s Robert Glasper. In 2019, Bridges won the Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Performance for “Bet Ain’t Worth the Hand,” from his album Good Thing.

Both Bridges and Khruangbin were featured on an episode of Austin City Limits this season, which premiered Nov. 6, and both have European tours planned for 2022 — Khruangbin in April, Bridges in July.