Friends, idol has been in tumult this year. Emotional graduations, gut-wrenching disbandments, the usual shenanigans turned up to 11 … it’s been a year of as many negatives as positives, I think, and that’s really hard to do in an industry built on the idea of making people happy. For a lot of us, one of the hardest-to-take moments of the year’s first half was the disbandment of our beloved Dots, who for two-plus years had been the real standard bearer for awesome shoegaze-derived alt-rock songs and enigmatic personalities. It was a blessing, frankly, to be able to host one of the good digs into the concept. Everybody on Team, I think, loved them.

And then they were gone, but it wasn’t long before the suspected successor came along — Ray came into theoretical existence not terribly long thereafter, and while things have been quiet for them in the first couple of months, of course it stood to reason that interesting and creative things were afoot. That’s where we land today, with their effective debut:

Oh my. Oh, that’s a delight. So fuzzy and buzzy and still so light and airy. I wish I could go swimming in this song, or at least listen to it on vinyl while lying on the floor and drifting out of live consciousness, which, okay that’s fine, yeah I know that I can’t put vinyl on the endless loop that I’d really be looking for there, but maybe a friend could handle the turns for me at least? No? You guys are jerks.

So, credits? About what you’d expect from this family:

📽シューゲイザーポップなMV公開📽

RAY初のMV「バタフライエフェクト」を公開😆管梓さん（For Tracy Hyde、エイプリルブルー）とみきれちゃん（・・・・・・・・・、RAY楽曲ディレクター）共作のポジティブシューゲイザーポップです🎉監督は須藤雲竜さん🎬

👇MVフルver.👇https://t.co/y9DOLJ9DWx pic.twitter.com/ar01owds5Z

— RAY (@_RAY_world) June 27, 2019

And now we wait for a record release. If they get something out in the next few months, we’re going to have a very interesting Best Of season, methinks.