Mysore/Bengaluru based four-piece We Are Lost call themselves a post-rock band, but as in many cases, that label doesn’t do them enough justice. The very mention of post-rock conjures up a sensationalized image of being sleepy or high and listening to something repetitive, slow and emotional for anywhere between six minutes and six hours (which is often a lovely thing but doesn’t represent the genre as well as it could). We Are Lost seems to be a band that wants the listener to be actively invested in every second of their music, so their single ‘Fly’ does a few things that really help their sound keep interest and, more than anything else, be a flat out good song as much as an experience.

The band achieves this by using a variety of careful and small elements to add dimension to their ideas. The intro has the vibe of an arpeggiated synth, and there are sporadic layers of piano and synth to supplement the ubiquitous clean guitars and washed out mix. It must also be noted that the tempo used here is a bit more upbeat and energetic than your regular plodding post-rock groove. However, the most arresting element here is the vocals; they are held back in the mix, but their classical-adjacent presentation and soaring runs add so much to sections that otherwise sound merely solid. That is actually the overall idea of the song and what makes it work. We Are Lost does not try to tinker with the bare bones of the form they use on ‘Fly’. If you take everything away, yeah, it’s a bunch of aggressively played but serene chords over relatively punchy drums and some modulation. But the point is that you can’t take everything else away, and that is to its merit.