Harmony Index - Lights On (2026)

A gem for dreampop romantics: the lush debut bow of Nico Leibman’s Harmony Index, featuring co-production by Purelink and Cesar Maria, feels like a dusky breeze on baked LA verandas, sifting loungey stardust on a mixtape-like drift between whisked pop, jungle, 2-step, house and trip hop frameworks, nodding to a.s.o, Olive, Janet Jackson, Antena, Jessy Lanza...

On a dozen self-made and highly infectious bops, Harmony Index does it for the dreamier heads with ‘Lights On’. An ideal platform for her vocal tone, balanced between breathy, blue-eyed soul vox and late ‘90s-via-’20s R&B élan, it’s sure to find home in bedrooms and lowlit living spaces across the board, such is the evidently broad appeal of her sound, which, save for a guest spot on Jump Source’s ‘Fold’ (2026) LP, arrives practically out of nowhere as a fully formed sound.

While explicitly referencing pop totems like Janet Jackson's 'The Velvet Rope', Everything but the Girl's 'Walking Wounded' and Prefab Sprout's 'Jordan: The Comeback’, Harmony Index’s elegant arrangements and classy variegation within-a-theme calls to mind dozens more landmarks from the history of dance-pop and dream-pop in the open-heart nature, longing desire, and crisp brevity of her songwriting. Thus, it should be no wonder that she’s been busy behind the scenes in recent years as touring partner and collaborator of artists like Jessica Pratt and Ana Roxanne.

Blushing into view with the panoramic strings of her intro, the album gently steps from airspun jungle dream-pop in ‘Recognise’, to Jessy Lanza-like breakbeat house bop ‘Trust’, via shimmers of Hysterical Love Project on ‘Enough’ or ‘To Be With You’, and Antena-esque, Latin-tinged downbeats in ‘Heartless’. There’s a standout of 2-step R&B shades away from Clara La San’s dance-pop works on ‘Keep On Calling’, and even Nicolette’s jams with SUAD in the breakbeat swerve ‘If’, all sensitively crafted for an effortless journey.