Last Saturday started as a responsible night in. One drink, maybe two, my girls on the couch, nobody dressed for anything. Someone put this on and something shifted before anyone could stop it. The guy who’d been low-key hovering all night suddenly had my full attention and I wasn’t the only one making new decisions. Suddenly we’re dancing in the kitchen at midnight with our hips doing things that have nothing to do with being responsible, someone’s got her back against the wall with a guy she definitely came here with intentions about, and nobody is thinking about going home. By 2am we’re three drinks deep with our shoes off and our standards pleasantly lowered, and every single one of us is right where we want to be. Sunstone’s ‘On An On’ did that. We had a whole plan and this song dismantled it in about thirty seconds flat and we are not even a little bit sorry.
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‘On An On’ is the song that takes over a party before anyone realizes it’s happening, and honestly that’s the most dangerous kind of track George Wong and JR Long II could have built. The production is lush and groovy with punchy drum grooves and guitar licks that feel like they’ve been living in your body forever and then K.O. opens her mouth and the whole shit shifts into another gear entirely. There’s this relentless forward momentum baked into the bones of it, a 90s R&B foundation with enough modern polish to feel current without being try-hard about it, and the island-at-sunrise energy is so specific and so fucking good that you feel it physically. It’s the kind of track where someone makes the call to keep going and nobody argues, the sun is coming up and you are absolutely not leaving, and by the time this thing peaks you’re not thinking about anything except how the hell you’re going to feel when it ends.
Nobody needs a setup for “On and On / We won’t stop till morning comes / We got this.” That’s a collective declaration with zero explanation required and if you’ve ever been in a night that tipped from fun into something you’re still talking about three weeks later you already know what this feels like. K.O. delivers it with this low-key authority that makes the repetition feel less like a chorus and more like a fucking agreement. Hear it once and you’re either in or you’re not.
K.O. drops you on an island with no signal and no plans and you are absolutely not mad about it. “The salt is in the air / The rhythm’s in my blood / We’re climbing up the stair / Higher than we should” is your body fully present and completely gone at the same time, and then “The world is far away / The water’s turning gold / We’ve got no words to say / Nothing’s getting old” hits and honestly? We’re not coming back from that. By the time K.O. gets to “No shadows, no sleep / The promise that we keep / We’re diving in too deep / To ever want to leave,” everyone in the room just co-signed a shit pact without reading the fine print.
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Sunstone is the London-based R&B outfit you need to know about, built around UK producer and composer George Wong and anchored by the kind of vocalist who makes you wonder what the hell she’s doing on your playlist and not your main stage. That vocalist is Kristal Oliver, aka K.O., aka Tytewriter, a Philadelphia-born Emmy and Grammy nominated singer-songwriter who has written for Justin Timberlake, Kanye West, Diddy, Mary J. Blige, Brandy, and Ty Dolla Sign, and has somehow found time to make ‘On An On’ sound like the best thing you’ve heard all week. George won the International Indie Songwriters Contest back to back in 2018 and 2019, which is the kind of thing that sounds impressive until you actually hear the music and realize the awards were underselling it. Rounding out the collective is JR Long II, an accomplished musician and five-time hit single producer from Dayton, Ohio, because apparently Sunstone doesn’t do anything half-assed. This is a goddamn dream team dressed up as an indie band and the fact that more people aren’t talking about them is genuinely criminal.
The sun was fully up by the time anyone thought about leaving and even then nobody moved very fast. The guy who’d been hovering at the start of the night had very much stopped hovering if you know what I mean and I wasn’t the only one who’d made a decision I was completely at peace with. My girls were scattered across the living room looking like the best kind of disaster, still laughing about things that happened at 2am that are absolutely nobody else’s business. Not a single regret in the entire apartment. That’s what this song does to a night. Sunstone built ‘On An On’ to dismantle your plans and replace them with something way more interesting, and if you let it do its job, you’re going to wake up Sunday with a story worth telling and absolutely no desire to apologize for any of it.
