Artist Spotlight: Mazzy Star is the slowest band in the room, and your Cigarettes After Sex playlist runs on them

Some songs sound like they are being sung to one person in a dark room. "Fade Into You" is the one that got there first.

It came out in 1993 on Mazzy Star's second album, and it has been creeping into late-night playlists ever since: breakup edits, film scenes, the slow end of a long night. If the hazy, half-whispered side of Cigarettes After Sex, Beach House or Men I Trust is where your listening lives, this is the band that built the room.

Who they are

Mazzy Star are a duo from Los Angeles: singer and lyricist Hope Sandoval and guitarist and composer David Roback. Roback had been in Rain Parade, part of the 1980s Paisley Underground scene, and then ran a project called Opal. When Opal's singer Kendra Smith left, Roback asked his friend Sandoval to take over, and in 1989 the project became Mazzy Star.

The sound is simple on paper: Roback's slide guitar and warm organ, a slow drum pulse, and Sandoval singing close to the microphone as if she does not want to wake anyone. She rarely raises her voice, and that is the whole trick. Nothing is rushed, and the quiet leaves room for you.

Their records: She Hangs Brightly (1990), So Tonight That I Might See (1993), Among My Swan (1996) and, after a long gap, Seasons of Your Day (2013), followed by the Still EP in 2018. David Roback died in Los Angeles on 24 February 2020, aged 61.

Start here

"Fade Into You" (1993). The one everybody knows. Slide guitar and a vocal that sounds like it is half asleep. If you only play one, play this at night.

"Into Dust" (1993). Also from So Tonight That I Might See, written by Roback with lyrics by Sandoval. Even slower and sadder, the kind of song that makes a room go quiet.

"Flowers in December" (1996). From Among My Swan. A little brighter and more country-tinged, proof that the band could ache without sinking.

"California" (2013). From the comeback record, easy to love if you already know the older material, and a good test of whether this sound is yours.

For the whole catalogue in one place, press play here:

Why now

Dream pop and slowcore are having a long moment with our readers. Cigarettes After Sex fill arenas on a sound that Mazzy Star helped invent, and the bands we keep spotlighting here, from Slowdive to Beach House, share the same instinct: make the music softer and people lean in.

There is also a through-line to the home scene. Kolkata's Peter Cat Recording Co. and the dream-pop generation around them carry the same lazy, late-night mood. See our pick for Peter Cat Recording Co. if you want the Indian side of this sound.

Sandoval has kept making music in her own quiet lane as Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions, a project with Colm Ó Cíosóig of My Bloody Valentine, and she sang on Massive Attack's "Sly" from the 1994 album Protection. Her voice turns up in surprising places because very few people can do so little and say so much.

If you like Mazzy Star, try

• Cocteau Twins: the other half of the dream-pop family tree. Start with Heaven or Las Vegas and let Elizabeth Fraser's voice turn into pure texture.
• Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions: her own project, softer and stranger, built for headphones at 3 a.m.
• Men I Trust: a modern, groove-led take on the same hush, if you want something you can play on a commute.

Already live in this world? Our list of artists like Cigarettes After Sex goes deeper, and Duster is the other slow cult classic to pair with this one.