Jessica Domingo’s Velvet Vocals and Pastels’ Dreamy Production Meet in the Neo-Soul Glow of “Sugar Lychee”
Old bartenders swear the sweetest cocktail always arrives with a sting; Pastels and Jessica Domingo seem to agree, bottling that exact paradox on “Sugar Lychee.” Released via Nettwerk, the collaboration between LA-based Vietnamese-Australian producer pastels (Annie Bui) and LA-via-Seattle Filipina-American vocalist Jessica Domingo unfolds like a watercolor wash applied at midnight—soft edges, saturated emotion, and a glow that refuses to fully dry. The production is Neo-Soul in silk pajamas: soulful keys drift in slow, luminous chords, tender drums keep a heartbeat that feels intimate rather than percussive, and subtle vaporwave haze peppers the air like neon mist clinging to a late-night window. Domingo’s delivery—velvety, raspy, and unguardedly human—doesn’t perform longing; it inhabits it, letting each phrase sag with the weight of unsent messages and half-believed promises.
Lyrically, “Sugar Lychee” circles a familiar ritual: sitting near the phone, rehearsing restraint, and quietly resenting how desire can become administrative—“You talk like you want to see me… where’s the urgency?” The song’s tension is slow-burn rather than explosive, the kind that makes the listener lean closer, as if the room itself might answer back. Pastels’ beat builds a plush corridor for that uncertainty to pace, while the hook’s “sin so sweet” reframes infatuation as a guilty dessert—delicious, destabilizing, and oddly devotional. The track also carries a meta-shimmer: Jessica Domingo’s voice arrives with the cultural afterglow of her high-profile sampling moments, yet here it’s stripped of spectacle, used as a close-up instrument of confession. By the end, the listener is left suspended in a plush ache—calm on the surface, internally buzzing—like perfume lingering on a sweater after a goodbye that wasn’t properly explained.
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