Today, the Los Angeles singer-songwriter Tony DV announces I know trash people who keep the oceans clean, his debut album due out January 28. Amid a sweetly strange amalgamation of the sounds of his childhood — slickly produced 70s Iranian pop and the crooning harmonies of early aughts indie rock — Tony DV harnesses seam-splitting idiosyncrasies through analog sonics.

Recalling the economical folk-rock melodies of Andy Shauf or the glistening melancholia of Travis, lead single “Buff Boy” is a joyful exhortation to growing up while still extending love to the kid-like, naive side of oneself and others.

Listen to “Buff Boy” and presave I know trash people who keep the oceans clean here.

As Tony explains, “Buff Boy” was written “after seeing one of my favorite bands in Brooklyn. The band was great, but what inspired me was this girl in the crowd who was doing a kind of crazy dance. She was trying to make her friends laugh, but they were busy watching the show. I felt bad for her, but also very grateful to have gone through enough life at this point to understand that these moments of pain, shame, or embarrassment are fleeting, like every other emotion.”

Last month, Tony DV shared “Charcoal Juice,” another cut from the album that’s imbued with the anthemic expanse of The Verve and the slightly askew production choices and harmonic complications of Alex G. The track served as a striking introduction — a moody and melodic embrace. Listen to “Charcoal Juice” here.

A Los Angeles native, Tony DV is a producer and artist who has dedicated recent years to facilitating others’ visions (Laura Elliott, WHATMORE’s Yoshi T and Jackson August, and the Frank Ocean co-signed Simpson).

However, he found unlikely inspiration for his own music in the LA River. “Most assume the LA River is manmade,” he explains, “it is not. Its current concrete form is the result of humans trying to improve it. Like a bee building a hive, it’s our nature to fortify, eternalize. But what is our responsibility now that we’ve completely dominated the natural world? Does being a good person mean living in opposition of our instincts?”

This observation provided the spark for I know trash people who keep the oceans clean, a project that harnesses his sharpened songwriting acumen to examinations of the tug-of-war between humanity and nature; what’s real and what’s fake; what’s right and what’s wrong. In these dramatic stakes, Tony DV draws out genuine pathos and carves out ebbs of unexpected empathy — hitting on a sound that attains an ornate bigness and distinct character without any sense of overwrought contrivance. It’s a marvelous and lived-in sound, direct but textured with compositional intrigue and philosophical heft.

More to come from Tony DV throughout the year.