Daily Dose: Kevin Krauter, “Pretty Boy”

Daily Dose is your daily source for the song you absolutely, positively need to hear every day. Curated by the Paste Music Team.

Repetition is a form of meditation; finding your rhythm, honing in on patterns, developing muscle memory all amount to the mindfulness and internality that Buddhists strive for.

On “Pretty Boy,” the new track from Hoops bassist Kevin Krauter, you can sense that the repeated guitar riff is a form of nirvana for the musician. It’s effortlessly technical, hypnotic in its metronomy but comforting in its hazy familiarity; the other instruments are both superfluous and vital, cohering into a greater whole that envelops you for its mesmerizing four-minute runtime.

Krauter explains in a statement that he wrote “Pretty Boy” in an attempt to learn “new ways to express feeling through my instrument,” and that the track helped him discover newfound love and confidence in himself. “Tell that pretty boy I wanna / see him dance, dance away,” Krauter sings in hushed tones just before a short instrumental break. When he returns, it’s with a self-assured beam: “Look ahead, say I see me now / Smiling at what used to stress me out.”