Wajatta — the musical duo of Reggie Watts and John Tejada — will return with their second album, Don’t Let Get You Down, to be released by Brainfeeder on February 28.
Don’t Let Get You Down is said to build on the duo’s debut album, Casual High Technology, which hinted at the broad stylistic possibilities inherent in the marriage of Watts’ elastic, soul-stirring vocals and Tejada’s layered, melodically-inventive productions.

Wajatta, pronounced wa-HA-ta, is a mash-up of the artists’ last names. Having grown up with similar musical influences, Austrian-born Tejada and German-born Watts draw from their love of electronic music, exploring the intersection between influences and innovation. They describe their music as “electronic dance music with its roots in Detroit techno, Chicago house, ’70s funk, and New York hip-hop.”

They build most tracks from scratch, bouncing ideas off one another from initial spark to finished product. It’s all done face-to-face: “We never just share files,” Tejada notes. They also try to keep their sessions as spontaneous as possible, in a never-ending quest to, as Watts puts it, “capture the freshness.” As a result, the 11 tracks on Don’t Let Get You Down “crackle with the energy of fresh ideas captured at the moment of inspiration,” the label explains.

Ahead of the release, the duo have shared the album’s title-track. With its brightly pulsing synths and whistling hook, it’s “the poppiest song we’ve ever done,” Watts says.