New Audio: Late Again Shares Breezy and Ironic “Crazy and Stupid”

São Paulo-born, Brooklyn-based artist Rafael Melo has had a multi-hyphenate career spanning award-winning films, bestselling indie video games and his solo recording project Late Again. And with Late Again, Melo expands the boundaries of his music beyond sound, in an effort to tell his stories in whatever medium it requires.

Sonically, Late Again sits at the intersection of North American indie pop, Bossa nova references, a hint of dreamlike film soundscapes and 80s Japanese grooves. Since starting the project in 2024, Melo has received coverage from Billboard, JazzTimes, Galore, Grimy Goods, TrebleZine and a long list of others. He also collaborated with Brazilian jazz maestro Arthur Verocai and experimental visual artist Gabriel Rollim, a.k.a Rollinos.

Building upon a growing profile, the São Paulo-born, Brooklyn-based artist’s third EP, I Dreamt I Was Awake is slated for a September 4, 2026 release. The new EP reportedly showcases a newfound confidence as he double downs on his astutely observational writing style. Over the course of six, intricately structured tracks, the EP’s material thematically explores the gap between the life you imagine, the one you’re actually living, and the strange ways people learn to make peace with that distance. Self-aware, sometimes humorous and always subtly critical, the EP’s songs fluctuate between tenderness and irony, minimalism and chaos, and the hyper-personal and universal.

The EP was recorded at Brooklyn’s Studio G and São Paulo’s Evil Twin Studio and features contributions from Kimbra‘s and Duda Beat’s Thiago Dom (drums), Twin Brother’s and John Roseboro’s John Lisi (bass) and was engineered by Nelson Espinal and mixed by Melo’s long-time Brazilian collaborator Heal Mura.

I Dreamt I Was Awake’s first single “Crazy or Stupid” is a languid, summer daydream of a tune, anchored around the sort of breezy yet hook-driven, dream pop textures that channels JOVM mainstays MUNYA, Kainalu and Tame Impala. But juxtaposed against the dreamy feel good vibes of the song are lyrics that casually reference the anxieties and horrors of our contemporary hellscape — potential deportation by ICE/CBP, AI takeovers and the like — while posting out that it feels like everyone has lot their mind. The result is a song that’s unsettling yet disarmingly catchy, and a clear-eyed, ironic look at our absurd, brutal world.

“It’s ultimately a funny ballad that doesn’t take itself too seriously” shares Late Again.

The song is accompanied by a mind-bending. highly computerized visualizer by Gabriel Rollim, a.k.a Rollinos.

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