The closing track on Bakar's BEASTIE EP is the one that sits with you longest. "Hey Doc" opens with a heavily modulated backing vocal, builds something atmospheric and almost disorienting, and then lets Bakar's lyrics carry what the production has set up. It is a deliberately strange way to end a record, which is exactly why it works. Bakar has been operating in this space since his debut: indie rock as a starting point, but with the genre boundaries treated as suggestions rather than walls. He spent 2023 pushing further with Halo , and BEASTIE feels like a compact proof of concept for whatever the third album will be. "Hey Doc" is the most explicit version of that argument: here is what it sounds like when the production and the songwriting are both fully committed to the same left-of-center vision. Some listeners preferred where the EP started. We find where it ends more interesting. "Hey Doc" is Bakar at his most singular.
Bakar