Two years is nothing in music terms, yet somehow Babehoven are already back — and that alone tells you something about where their heads are at right now.
Maya Bon and Ryan Albert, the upstate New York duo behind one of 2024's most quietly devastating records, have announced their follow-up to Water's Here In You. The new album is called I See Them, I See Me, it's landing in September via Double Double Whammy, and they've shared a first single called "Lasagna" to mark the occasion. We've had a listen. It's the kind of track that makes you want to sit very still.
Coming Back From Something Real
What makes this announcement land differently from your standard album cycle roll-out is the context sitting underneath it. According to reporting from The Line of Best Fit, Bon suffered a vocal injury in the period between records. That's not a minor footnote — for a songwriter whose voice carries so much of the emotional weight in Babehoven's music, it reframes everything about this return. The fact that they're back at all feels like something. The fact that they're back with material that clearly has that same considered, unhurried quality to it feels like even more.
There's a particular kind of artist who responds to personal setback by making work that's quieter and more precise rather than louder and more defensive. Babehoven are that kind of artist. Water's Here In You was proof of it. Everything we're hearing so far suggests I See Them, I See Me is going to operate in a similar register — intimate, unpretentious, the sort of record that takes its time getting to you and then doesn't leave.
What "Lasagna" Actually Does
The lead single isn't trying to announce itself. It doesn't open with a hook designed to land in thirty seconds of a vertical video. What it does instead is build a kind of atmosphere — unhurried guitar work, Bon's voice sitting right at the centre of the mix, the whole thing feeling like a conversation rather than a performance. If you're coming to it expecting something bombastic, you're coming to it wrong.
That restraint is Babehoven's whole thing and it's genuinely rare. We live in a moment where [Fiona Apple has spoken openly about the difficulty of writing when the world keeps throwing horrors at you](/getohedz/music/fiona-apple-says-she8217s-struggling-to-write-about-the-world8217s), and there's something in that tension — between the personal and the overwhelming — that Bon and Albert seem to navigate by going further inward rather than trying to meet the noise head on. "Lasagna" doesn't sound like a protest. It sounds like a survival report.
Double Double Whammy is the right home for this. The label has a track record of letting artists exist at their own pace without pushing them into formats that don't suit them.
Our Take
I See Them, I See Me doesn't have to prove anything. Water's Here In You already established Babehoven as one of the more genuinely affecting acts working in this space, and from what "Lasagna" is showing us, they haven't overreached or second-guessed themselves in the time between. September can't come fast enough. Add this to your list now.