With her name nodding to the past, Raia Was is the project of an old soul. Raised by her mother in downtown Manhattan, she is a mainstay within the NY indie community, recording and touring as a vocalist and keyboard player before stepping into her own solo project as a performer. On her self-produced sophomore LP, Raia Was plays Captain Obvious. What began as a practice to combat tunnel vision and increased anxiety after years of hyper vigilance around health and safety (aka living through a pandemic) turned into a body of work about the big feelings inside life’s subtleties. She writes: "Captain Obvious is a technology I’ve been using the last three years to cope with the feeling of losing my 'ness'. It was an entryway back into subtlety from the blowout of anxiety, through the simplicity of the obvious - the lamp is yellow, the sun is spotted on the white wall - seeing things as they are, and then making music from that place. These songs are about the ecstasy of saying what you mean, about the awkwardness of apologies, about the music industry, giving up the ghost and putting your cards on the table. It’ll also make you dance." Filled with interludes and deep grooves that spin out into disorientation and land back again at the heart of the matter, the fragile part, Captain Obvious will leave you breathless and coming back for more. “Lustrous alt-pop.” – NYLON “Everyone who jumped on the Kate Bush bandwagon should get on board the Raia Was bus.”

 – Riff Magazine