With a burning heart, a searing voice and explosive choruses, KEIR is not afraid to play with fire. At 25 years old, the singer-songwriter displays a bright mind and a dark soul, nourished on heartache, Weltschmerz and decades of pop-music history – ready to spit it all back out into the future like fuel on a flame.

KEIR may stand on the shoulders of soul divas and rock gods, but his craft shows no sense of retro fetishism. This is what the blues sounds like in the 21st century, and there’s barely a trace of those worn-out, 12-bar formulas. Instead, KEIR offers simultaneously a distillation and an innovation of that musical ritual: transforming inner turmoil into a tune – not to spread misery but to exorcize demons, and in the best case, incite compassion. “Shiver” is a shining example, a seductive groove that shudders with red-hot, angst-ridden sensuality.

In describing his own songs, the word that comes up the most is “heavy”. Musically, there’s enough mass that you start to feel a gravitational pull, and in lyrical tandem, KEIR reveals a heavy heart. But there’s nothing heavy-handed about his words – piercingly sharp when needed, yet bold enough to stay soft. Always honest but often ambiguous, like a painting made of poetry. Ambitious melodies that reach for the radio; a sonic rawness he’s unwilling to tame for the sake of pop appeal.