Bent Denim’s backstory reads like a modern update on the Postal Service: Two pals in two cities, making music and swapping it through the mail (email in their case). But the music of this New Orleans-via-Nashville duo, made up of Ben Littlejohn and Dennis Sager, is less glitchy computer emo and more gauzy after-class notebook poetry, blooming with spaciousness and pockets of pretty melody. “City Of Gardens” — a peak at the band’s forthcoming debut, Romances You — moseys along at its own crimson pace as the pair sonically and lyrically evoke the sweltering title region: “That city of gardens was Savannah / And when I left it was frozen in amber / Like my parents’ friends, I envy them / All the same routines in their brainstem.” A sad piano gallops through a few bars later, revealing the completion to that thought: “All I know is the neon South.” For this brainy pair of lo-fi dorm-room artistes, the aching past easily transmutes into heartbreaking pop. Listen below.

Romances You is out 4/28. Bent Denim will play release shows in New Orleans on 4/10 and Nashville on 4/17.