Nico Yaryan used to play drums for blues-rocker Hanni el Khatib, an old friend from high school. While on tour in Amsterdam, he met a girl and fell in love, and when he returned home to LA, he secured a job clipping weed at a Northern California pot farm to earn enough money to fly back and forth to the Netherlands. This complicated intercontinental romance is the subject of his debut album What A Tease, and its first single, “Just Tell Me,” is out today. It’s an appealing mixture of melodic pop classicism and plainspoken heartache that brings a piano-less Tobias Jesso Jr. to mind, and this is what Yaryan writes about the song in a press release:

I wrote this song when I was feeling strain in my long distance relationship, and I knew it had been too long between visits. I didn’t have the money to book a trip to Amsterdam where my girlfriend lived, and I was feeling selfish that I had chosen to live in LA to pursue my music. It takes a lot of work to maintain a relationship when someone lives on the other side of the planet, and I wasn’t being good about making our Skype dates on time, or being as present as I could have been. So this song is a sort of plea to her.

“Just tell me the love is strong,” he entreats. Listen below.

What A Tease will be out early 2016 on Partisan Records, and a “Just Tell Me” 7″ will be out in December.