The internet is still occasionally truly beautiful, because how else would we end up with a white kid from Madison, Wisconsin, doing Drain Gang vocal flutters over Milwaukee lowend beats? His name is Lightris, he’s part of the Wisconsin collective Run Along Forever (AyooLii, killdawn, 414BigFrank, etc.) and a couple months ago, he and his pal sero stumbled into a TikTok hit with “Kwik Trip,” a feathery, jittery ode to the beloved Midwest gas station chain. In the video, they shimmy shoulders, top rock, and hit Stevedastoner’s “Uptown Downtown” dance in the snow as the handclaps rain down.

“Up Down” is even wilder. Amid Lightris and ekebabyy’s busy-as-hell beat, you catch glimpses of the 19-year-old skipping class and leaving town (I can imagine him speeding on I-94 in his parents’ car with this cranking) but pretty soon his voice is pure nasally rhythmic texture rippling in harmonies. Even as the hook raises your dopamine levels, there’s a little bit of that out-the-window longing tucked in his writing, shades of lockdown-era hyperpop. And then the log drums come in, and I’ve officially never heard some shit like this before. The white boy swag is strong with this one.

Lowend pioneer Munch Lauren once told me that the reason Milwaukee beats sound like that—like the Energizer Bunny strapped to the drums, just a few ticks off from New Orleans bounce—is because folks would literally dance to bounce tracks in the clubs in the early 2010s. Bladee once told Bomb magazine that, while making his dance album Good Luck with Mechatok, he grew obsessed with writing hooks around single words and phrases: “Where I’m at now, I feel like this is a more universal language.” Lightris tells us, “Updownupdowupdownupdownupdown,” and for a few minutes, the cosmos is in alignment.