By Michael Guarino

Anyone who’s ever had conflicting romantic thoughts and feelings swirl around in their head will immediately identify with the rhythmically busy and melodically simple “not like you.” The July 10 release by the indie pop band Nightly, consisting of cousins Jonathan Capeci and Joey Beretta and drummer Nick Sainato, is a quintessential forbidden love song with extraordinarily sharp production. The song details a half-formed, friends-with-benefits type of relationship, with both participants wanting something more but afraid to go for it. The speaker almost perceives his true lover in his current partner: “Looks like you, but it’s not like you,” he sings. He adds, “I think about you even when I know I don’t want to,” meaning that his obsession over his crush has become a part of him that even he himself can’t control. Capeci’s tender baritone voice is the calming anchor throughout a flurry of electronic bass thuds and fast-paced, hollowed out synth pulses; sonically, “not like you” resembles Lauv’s “I Like Me Better” and Rex Orange County’s “10/10.” The intro, featuring a slow fade of choppy, fuzzy metallic effects, sounds almost like the hold music that plays in anticipation of a long-awaited phone conversation. The body of the song is brief but memorable, much like the fling it describes. Remarkably, “not like you” loops perfectly from stream to stream, reflecting the continuous thought process recounted in the lyrics: “I keep playing it in my head,” Capeci sings. Once you’ve played “not like you,” it’s hard to resist playing it over and over.