“People still think we’re one person,” says Dijon Duenas, who sings and produces in the R&B group. But actually, says co-producer Abhi Raju, “We’re two different people making music with two different backgrounds.”

Growing up in Maryland, Raju says he mostly listened to Indian music and later, rock. Duenas, meanwhile, found his base in R&B and hip-hop. Together, the pair explore the pensive outer reaches of contemporary R&B music. They’ve been gradually tweaking the formula since their 2013 debut.

Raju and Duenas say they have creative clashes all the time. But those battles don’t make it into the finished product — including on their cohesive new EP, Montana (listen below), where Duenas’ wispy, reflective vocals and Raju’s sumptuous co-production sound like a fated match.

“The thing we share in common is immediacy and warmth,” Duenas says. “Whatever that means to anybody else we can’t say, but… warmth means the same thing musically to both of us. I think that’s the most important thing.”

That warmth began to take shape with “Twelve,” a 2013 track with rhythms you could find on an Aaliyah single. (The duo even brought traces of Aaliyah and producer Timbaland to “Baby Girl,” a song they produced for Talib Kweli’s surprise 2015 release, F— the Money.) Their 2015 EP, Stay Up, remains rooted in their influences, but forges a path toward a more spacious sound.

“For our last EP, we were like, ‘Yo, let’s do everything that we can possibly do,’” Raju recalls. “Now we’re more concise with it.”

On Montana, Duenas’ soft singing melts into sprawling, pulsating instrumentals. The five-track release lingers on fragmented emotions, from pettiness in “Ignore” to wistfulness in “Often.” While Stay Up felt mildly nostalgic, Montana sounds like growth.

What started as a hobby for the two self-described introverts has evolved into an “expressive exercise,” Duenas says.

“We don’t want to get caught in just any wave,” the vocalist says. They aspire to make music that’s as “sonically forward-thinking as possible without overthinking it.”

After Abhi//Dijon took a brief hiatus this year to figure out post-grad life and move from Ellicott City to Los Angeles, where they’re focusing on their craft. A top goal: refine their live show.

Onstage, Duenas says, “I never felt like I was representing myself the way I wanted to.” He struggles with anxiety, and he’s felt hampered by preconceived notions of what an R&B performer should do.

“Dijon’s not Usher,” Raju jokes.

“Seriously,” Duenas agrees. “That was the existential thing because, like, I’m not an R&B dude.” So he’s simply decided to perform more honestly. “It’s more about owning up to who you are,” he says.

Today, the two 20-somethings took another step toward expanding their online fanbase, releasing Stay Up, their anticipated sophomore EP, via Fader.

The EP builds on Raju and Duenas’ subtle strengths, murmuring more than it exclaims. On love songs (i.e. most of their tunes), vocalist Duenas is prone to sweet propositioning — never ungentlemanly come-ons — and co-producer Raju keeps the lights low.

But there’s some experimentation here, too: Abhi//Dijon has always been steeped in hip-hop, but Duenas goes all the way when he raps on “Werk.” At the EP’s end, closer “Apple Pie” sounds like it could have come from a D’Angelo outtake.

Below, stream Stay Up — and light some candles while you’re at it.

“We [are still learning] about mixing and having sounds fight for space,” the pair wrote in an email.

Yet Abhi//Dijon’s debut EP, particularly the song “13,” revealed a sensitive ear for pop songwriting. “If we had to describe ’13,’ it reminds us a lot of Justified-era Justin Timberlake and The Neptunes,” they wrote, “without much of the same musicality or production value.”

Now it sounds like Abhi Raju and Dijon Duenas are making progress in the sophistication department. Yesterday NPR premiered “Wait,” the duo’s new slow-burning single (listen below). It occupies the same chilly stratosphere as older songs like “13” and “Twelve” — and Duenas’ whispery vocals sound as sensuous and longing as ever — but production-wise, it’s a step up from the young artists’ earlier stuff.

What’s next for Abhi//Dijon? Possibly an EP — but Duenas told WRGW in February not to expect an LP just yet.

“We would like to make a pretty cool, ambitious full-length, but we’ve been using my apartment and Abhi’s basement to make songs,” he said. “We want a 16-piece horn section too, so it’s hard to fit that in a basement.”

Based in Ellicott City, Maryland, the duo picked up a sizable online following over the last year with only a few songs on Soundcloud: “Horses,” “Let You Know” and “Twelve.” But earlier this week, Abhi//Dijon released a new self-titled EP—already attracting attention on various music blogs—that takes their sound a step further.

EP highlight “13” is the 13th song from the young duo, but Abhi and Dijon actually recorded it before “Twelve,” their 14th song, a standout that could have passed for a futurist B side to Silk’s seductive 1999 single “If You (Lovin’ Me).” Stylistically, the progression makes sense: The duo says that “13” marked their first foray into conventional song structure, and “Twelve” followed the same path.

“If we had to describe ‘13,’ it reminds us a lot of Justified-era Justin Timberlake and The Neptunes without much of the same musicality or production value,” the duo writes (self-deprecatingly) in an email. “We’re still learning how to write, and ‘13’ is the most traditional structure we’d attempted.”

But Abhi and Dijon don’t take the same traditionalist approach to lyricism. “We both really like the idea of creating little fragments of scenarios and situations that don’t necessarily need to be anchored to some overarching set of characters, settings or narratives,” the duo writes. “But we aren’t great at trying to fit a set of lyrics or ideas into a song before the song exists…We form the lyrics from melodies that naturally come out as the production kind of grows.”

Abhi and Dijon, students at University of Maryland in Baltimore County and College Park, respectively, split the creative heavy-lifting when they’re not tied up with school and work. “We do production together, always in the same room at the same time,” they write. “We both come up with the melodies and Dijon sings.” (Though Abhi sang backup on “Horses.”) The EP came together in fits and starts over seven or eight months.

Abhi and Dijon might describe the process as a learning experience. “From the first song we’ve made—somewhere in June or July until now—our biggest thing is just knowing our limitations as writers and producers and working to realistically build and progress,” the duo writes. “We [are still learning] about mixing and having sounds fight for space, and we think our biggest accomplishment with the EP [was] keeping things as simple as we can.”