After releasing their fourth album Surrender in 2021, RÜFÜS DU SOL declared it “the end of a chapter for us as a unit”. After years of living in their adopted hometown of LA, its members (Tyrone Lindqvist, Jon George and James Hunt) relocated to Encinitas and Miami. As the group crafted Inhale / Exhale over the next two years, the physical separation required them to carve out time for joint writing sessions, where they reconvened in places such as LA, Austin and Ibiza. “We really made the most of those two-week stints,” George tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “We were in a really good creative flow. We were reconnecting and particularly reconnecting in the studio more than ever.“ When “Music Is Better”, the album’s lead single, arrived in June 2024, it marked RÜFÜS DU SOL’s triumphant return. Its joyful chorus—“Music is better when we’re together”—seems as much a love song as it is a celebration of the creative magic they find when sharing a physical space. Those feelings of joy, love and gratitude run throughout Inhale / Exhale, a lighter turn from its predecessor’s darker and more introspective themes. A new relationship sparks promise “burning as bright as the sun” on opening track “Inhale”, while love’s stars align on “In the Moment” and the mood slinks towards carnal on “Levitating”. Mirroring their nomadic creative process, RÜFÜS DU SOL cover more sonic ground outside of soaring melodic house. “The Life” transports them to colder climes through rumbling bass and crisp percussion, followed by the fuzzing rock edge of “Pressure”, and “Edge of the Earth” pulls from driving trance. There are quiet moments, too, on the reflective “New York”, where the sparse drums resemble a heartbeat, and the ambient “Exhale”, where digitised vocal harmonies offer the album’s serene exit. “We’ve been pushing the boundaries of what the expressions of our music looks like, trying different tempos, trying different beat expressions, things that are beatless,” Hunt says. “And so I feel like this album that we’ve created is way more dynamic and it reflects that we’re more liberated.”