There’s something to be said about embracing the organic coincidences of music, the inherent personability found in an imperfect story. This is the ethos of Bestfriend: it’s both how they met and how they create. At one time they were distantly connected, simply friends of friends, until the duo of Stacy Kim and Kaelan Geoffrey united to become Bestfriend, even if that was only true in the title they gave themselves. “We were actually not best friends when we met…we settled on the name Bestfriend, because it feels like a hug,” admits Kim. Her identity in music consisted mostly of private recordings of herself singing covers, while Geoffrey had been a part of high school bands where he was “really into weird guitar pedals.” You can hear these corners of their personalities in their work together, as Kim’s shy-but-charming voice fits Geoffrey’s dynamically-gentle production style to a tee. The tangible chemistry between the two is only accentuated by their circumstances: the two collaborated though they existed on different sides of Canada, Kim in Vancouver and Geoffrey in Toronto, building a friendship and musical companionship from a distance.

Through these obstacles, their shared artistic vision thrived. Bestfriend’s debut EP places i’ve lived helped carve out a place for the duo, lead by standout track ''You Want Everyone To Love You,” a pulsating scorned-lover theme song. Today they share the final teaser for their newest EP, places i’ve left, with the release of single “Love Always Came So Easy For You.” Their new project runs akin to its predecessor, a sister EP that showcases new angles of the duo. Both projects are explained to be “a set of love letters to a past life; your childhood home, your first love, the very specific feeling of being young in the summer, at a party or out with friends when you've got a paper due the next day. The anxiety simmering just underneath your skin that feels almost biologically ingrained into your generation. places i've lived was a retrospective glance into this life: ‘This is what happened. This is how it felt. This is why it felt that way. This is what I did. places i've left asks: 'What now? What do I do with everything that happened? How do we move forward from here?’” The sentimentality implied in the duo’s name is expressed explicitly in the lyrics and vibrations of the project, due out on April 21.

In the case of Bestfriend, the seemingly-natural compatibility heard in their music can be deceiving. “We had to go through a really frustrating process of trying to understand each other in order to get where we are today,” Kim says, explaining that the two struggled to give each other constructive criticism in the beginning: “If he sends me four things and I don't like all four of them, I don't want to be the person that's like, ‘I don't like any of these.’It was difficult kind of navigating that for me.” Through intentionality and a sense of paired potential, the two persevered and have come to a healthy relationship as co-creators and friends. “We ended up realizing we had so many of the same life experiences, just in different fonts,” Geoffrey says, illuminating a partnership that is only bound by its own expectations. places i’ve left brings new textures and wave-lengths to Bestfriend’s sonic universe, a rapidly-developing soundscape that encourages listeners to get lost in the music. Lead singles “LEMON LIME,” “Anxious People,” and “Love Always Came So Easy For You” offer only a glimpse of what is to come, both in the near future and in the duo’s evolution.

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