Baby Girl: Stay Here Where It's Warm LP

What if a song could feel like a moment you never want to end—even though you know it must? Like being snuggled up in bed in the morning with the knowledge you’re going to have to start your day any moment now. The duality between the place of comfort and the loss of it is at the emotional core of Stay Here Where It’s Warm, the long-awaited debut album from Toronto band Babygirl. Meticulously built and carefully shaped, it’s a warm, gently devastating record about fleeting intimacy, emotional refuge, and learning to let go.

Babygirl is the Kiki Frances and Cameron Bright: kindred spirits whose music has been marinating since they met in a jazz program and bonded over a shared love of Katy Perry, The Beach Boys, and the art of a good song. 2000s pop-rock, ‘90s slacker rock, shoegaze, jangle and dream-pop stirred together with the comforting energy of two artists committed to their craft, and aren’t hiding behind a wall of nonchalance.

Across Stay Here Where It’s Warm, each song puts a slightly different lens on what it means to stay, or leave, or want to. These are songs that have followed them, stayed percolating, or, as Babygirl put it, “keep tapping on our shoulders.” It’s a record that’s been simmering quietly while the band wrote, scrapped, rewrote, pored over every tiny detail. “Sometimes it feels like you’re making a pointillist painting and you’re just seeing the dots,” they say, “and then at the end you stand back” to see the world they’ve built. They call themselves “studio rats”—this album marks a step into the light.