“You don’t have to be loud to move forward,” South London singer-songwriter Tirzah Mastin told Pitchfork three years ago. The observation nicely evoked the quiet adventurousness of her debut album, Devotion, which was produced by longtime collaborator Mica Levi and featured other artists from the neighborhood like Coby Sey. “Send Me,” Tirzah’s first proper release since then, reunites her with Levi and Sey; together they provide another captivating example of hushed restraint that sounds like it’s transmitted from the future. The sketch-like looseness and emotional longing of Devotion persist, but the production is even more minimal, and the feelings even more oblique.

Underpinned by skeletal drums and loping guitar, Mastin’s R&B-inflected incantations hold the song together. Yet its unresolved deliberateness demands attention, inviting you to contemplate how something so intimate-sounding can also seem so alien. A growl of distorted electric guitar (reminiscent of Devotion’s “Guilty”) arrives in the final seconds, a reminder that Tirzah can be a bit loud, too, but only when she chooses. The homey yet defamiliarized world she and her musical partners create is wholly self-contained, progressing just as they command.