As I make my way through my list of favorite people for 2016, this week my focus is on Leon Bridges, the singer/songwriter who’s kept me company for many flights, car rides, workouts and cigar breaks since I started listening to him late last year.

Leon Bridges is a throwback artist whose music echoes the soulful gospel sounds of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, and he pulls this off without coming off as sentimental and without any sense that he’s mimicking the sound of others. He is his own man, he has his own sound, and his music sounds as fresh in 2016 as it might have in 1966.

Bridges’s Coming Home is his only album to date and it’s filled with a range of upbeat, reflective, and downright worshipful tracks. While so many of today’s artists seem committed to over-stimulating the senses with every frantic bell, whistle, and loop track possible, Bridges shows his talent in offering, clean, simple, elegant songs that make you feel something more than just nervous energy.

I’m no music critic, so I’ll keep this blog post short and do more show than tell. Here are three of Bridges videos that will let you see and hear for yourself.