While Rounak Maiti’s debut album released in 2017, he spent nearly six years as a self-taught bedroom artist prior to that. Through those years, he quietly honed his ability to create rough-hewn, melancholic music with nothing but acoustic instruments, budget recording equipment and Audacity. Released to a small but dedicated audience on SoundCloud, Rounak’s musical output grew to an impressive size just a few years into its existence and proved his formidable ability not just as a singer-songwriter, but also as a multifaceted producer. For the US-born and India-raised artist, music’s only purpose is posterity; it exists and manifests as a brief, quixotic moment that can—and must—be cherished forever. Since his full-length love letter to country music in 2017 (Bengali Cowboy), Rounak has released another full-length album (Waiting on the Comedown) and flurry of singles reflecting his panoramic ability to contemplate issues of identity, family, geography and selfhood in the age of hyper-connectivity. He does so through a highly omnivorous sonic palette, spanning indie folk, shoegaze, dream pop and electronica, all filtered through Rounak’s uniquely singular style. Rounak is also one of the primary songwriting forces behind indie pop purveyor Small Forward, a project he began with co-writer and co-producer Michael Stevenson while living in Los Angeles.