[Cover photo credit to Gabriel Rollinos]

Late Again, the Brooklyn-based Dream-Pop project of Rafael Melo, has announced new EP I Dreamt I Was Awake, due out September 4, 2026. Across the collection’s six songs the multimedia artist weaves melodies inspired by his native Brazil.

Lead single “If You Have A Bridge (I’m Buying)” is out now and is an ode to New York City, “a trippy, melodic journey through the eyes of an immigrant who‘s found the closest thing to home.”

Melo says:

It’s a song about consciously buying into pipe dreams, and finding happiness in that choice even when, in a place like this, ‘everyone you know is broke or blue’ as the lyric puts it.

The accompanying music video, produced in collaboration with visual artist Gabriel Rollinos (Tame Impala, Toro y Moi, Metronomy), follows a surreal bike ride across all five boroughs of New York City, with over 100 miles cycled to capture the footage.

With I Dreamt I Was Awake, across six itracks, the EP “explores the gap between the life you imagine and the one you’re actually living, and the strange ways people learn to make peace with that distance.”

Recorded at Studio G (Brooklyn) and Evil Twin (São Paulo), the EP features drums from Thiago Dom (Kimbra, Duda Beat), bass from John Lisi (Twin Brother, John Roseboro), engineering from Nelson Espinal (Mdou Moctar, YHWH Nailgun, Sessa), and mixing from Heal Mura, Melo’s long-term Brazilian collaborator.

Born and raised on the coast of São Paulo, Late Again sonically sits at the intersection of North American Indie Pop and obscure Brazilian bossa nova references, with a hint of dreamlike film soundscapes and Japanese 80s grooves.

With a career spanning award-winning films and bestselling indie video games, Rafael Melo’s work through Late Again “expands the boundaries of his music…in an effort to tell his stories in whatever medium it takes.”