Thomas Cole has built a career on turning small, specific images into full blown pop hooks, and “Stubble” might be his cleverest one yet. The premise is almost too simple: a few days of not shaving becomes a metaphor for authenticity. It should feel like a gimmick. It doesn’t, mostly because Cole commits to it without winking too hard.

Musically this sits right where his catalog has been heading, electro pop with a dance floor pulse, but the twang running under the verses is a nice touch that keeps it from blending into every other synth heavy single out right now. Electropoint’s production knows when to hold back too. The bass under the chorus is the loudest thing in the mix, and it works because everything else stays relatively restrained until that hook lands.

Lyrically it’s very much a song about flirting in a bar, but Cole’s read on it gives it a little more weight than the average summer single. “Everyone has a story they survived, the stubble is simply the evidence” is a good line, and it’s smart writing that he lets that idea carry the whole song instead of overexplaining it in the verses.

Check it out here.