Khruangbin : The Universe Smiles Upon You ii

If you could go back in time ten years, what would you want to tell yourself? This was a question Khruangbin posed to themselves when approaching the ten-year anniversary of their debut album, the once cult classic, now genre-defining work ‘The Universe Smiles Upon You’. ‘If we could go back and tell ourselves how much was going to happen to us after that record, what would we want to celebrate?’ asked Laura Lee, bassist, vocalist, and founding member of the band. Instead, they thought: ‘Let’s do it again’. ‘The Universe Smiles Upon You ii’ was recorded on January 4-6, 2025, in the same family barn of guitarist Mark Speer, across the same dates where TUSUY was first conceived ten years earlier. Though the conditions were the same – dirt floor, brutally cold, minimal sound isolation, all takes live – the songs aren’t. They’re re-approached, some changed more than others, harnessing the lightning-in-a-bottle energy of TUSUY while discovering what would