Two years after her debut, Big for You, Zsela is preparing a follow-up. In May, she put out an instrumental ambient record. Fittingly, her new single “Kinda Guy” is all about what’s left unspoken. “She got off in the back of the truck, I noticed/We get high on PCH/Acid, I said I did,” she remembers, singing almost under her breath. There’s an open-ended, dreamlike economy to these starting lines about a drive with a lover: the acronym for California’s Pacific Coast Highway could be a drug; “got off” evokes both sex and exit ramps; the offhand “I said I did” could hint at dishonesty, or some previous conversation recalled within the memory.

The song itself feels just as spacious, just as rich in restraint. Its tone reminds me of Meshell Ndegeocello’s Bitter—a great album about the irreconcilable space created when two people can’t quite reach each other—but I also hear some Joan Armatrading, ’80s Joni, and the Dijon/mk.gee school of pop production, where a boxed-in, digital affect fortifies against a surplus of feeling. Zsela, flirty and easygoing, revels in the futility of others’ attempts to encapsulate her. “Keep talking, baby, till you figure me out,” she sings; no one can, but it’s fun to try.