Izabel Goulart - Featuring Rhye "Hunger"

There’s no good way to prove this, but I suspect the rise in
American birth rates in the late 1980s, the so-called Echo baby boom, had something to do with the release of Sade’s Diamond Life album in 1984. Smooth Operator alone must be responsible for millions of Millennials. At the very least it’s responsible for Rhye. If the newcomer’s debut EP is anything to go by, wet nurses better brace themselves. The enigmatic duo weaves knee-weakening slow jams with silky crooning and cottony synthesizers that have a thread count in the thousands. The singer is a dead ringer for Sade Adu. Oh, and it’s a dude.

At age 14, Mike Milosh would conduct Canadian political surveys over the telephone. “It was one of the best paying and informative jobs ever,” he says. Today the musician and photographer bounces between Berlin and L.A. “I’m a fool for that shake in your thighs,” he sighs on Open, one of the cuts on the group’s debut EP, Hunger. “The first song I ever wrote was in my parents’ garage. It was a rap song about a girl walking down the street,” Milosh recalls. “I recorded it into a ghetto blaster. It wasn’t very good, not even remotely cute.” He has clearly learned a lot about love since those days.

Q & A with Rhye

The first record you owned?

Purple Rain and 1999 by Prince were the first vinyl I ever purchased.

Favorite sport?

Road biking is definitely my favorite sport, with mountain biking a close second.

Favorite record?

It’s between Dark Side of the Moon and Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s The Main Ingredient.

Your favorite beach?

It’s in Thailand, on the south end. This beach doesn’t really have a name, but it’s the greenest still water I have ever swam in. It sparkles with phosphorus at night.

Something from the past you wish you could bring back.

Vaurnet sunglasses, Sunice ski jackets, Travel Fox sneakers and people who buy music.