You’ll remember that we featured Fake Laugh’s track ‘Near You’ just before the emerging London name went off on a UK tour with Gengahr. Well, now Kamran Khan is off the road and back with another single, ‘Exotic Bird’. Drenched in that signature wooze, this is the fourth song to be released from the upcoming album and as Khan tells us, it’s “basically about being in awe of another person and how that awe makes you reflect on yourself. It deals with a confused feeling which lies somewhere between admiration and envy." Surely, we’ve all felt this pang of inferiority mixed with the desire to better ourselves to meet the imaginary standards of the pedestalled individual. And so, Fake Laugh gives us the space to explore this most complex of emotional states within the languid instrumentation, lofi production and questioning lyrics of ‘Exotic Bird’. With only a few days to the release of the Dining Alone LP (March 13th), consider this your final warning call to set a reminder in your calendar. - Hannah Thacker   [Photo credit: Holly Whittaker]