For producer Barney Lister and vocalist Kojo Degraft-Johnson, music is a place to belong. Hailing from different ends of England and disparate cultures, they first met online in 2021 after Barney discovered Kojo singing live on Instagram. As MRCY, the duo created a shared safe space of soulful self-expression that combines the timeless musical warmth of Marvin Gaye with the genre-melding modern sensibility of Khruangbin, Anderson .Paak and Sault.