Cautious Clay Shares “Ivy (2pm)”, New Album ‘The Hours: High Noon’ out July 31st via Concord
Cautious Clay shares new single “Ivy (2PM)”, the second offering from his upcoming album The Hours: High Noon, due July 31 via Concord Records. The new track arrives alongside an official visualizer and follows “Green Screen (1PM)”, the lead single that introduced the final chapter in his Hours trilogy.
“Ivy (2PM)” finds Cautious in that skin-crawling place where love feels misaligned and impossible to shake. An emotional reckoning laced with midsummer heat and quiet betrayal, the sharp breakup track captures him learning from his mistakes, holding firm boundaries, and finally choosing distance.
“‘Ivy (2pm)’ is about realizing differences and a misalignment in a relationship,” explains Cautious. “Feeling vengeful or taken for granted, but simultaneously accepting where I’m at with that person.”
The High Noon chapter captures a period of growth for Cautious Clay, both personally and artistically. Where The Hours: Morning explored clarity, routine, and the emotional landscape of daybreak, and The Hours: Night leaned into unpredictability, freedom, and uncertainty, The Hours: High Noon lands in the middle – the uncomfortable center of the day, where reflection turns into action and self-awareness becomes self-preservation.
Across The Hours: High Noon, Cautious continues to refine his genre-blurring approach while pushing into warmer, more lived-in territory. Rooted in emotional maturity, self-reflection, and sonic exploration, the album finds him delving further into himself with candor and sharp, candy-sweet hooks, moving through frustrating situations, misaligned relationships, unconventional dynamics, growth, and the hard-earned perspective that comes with time.
Expanding on the world introduced throughout the Hours series, High Noon brings the trilogy to a thoughtful close while opening a new creative chapter for Cautious Clay. His songwriting remains introspective and deeply human, balancing vulnerability with optimism as he searches for balance in the tension between clarity and chaos, routine and spontaneity, distance and connection.
Last spring, Cautious Clay kicked off the series with The Hours: Morning, a conceptual eight-track project equal parts mixtape and emotive timetable, exploring the feeling, color, and emotional landscape of each morning hour. Created after a move to Philadelphia and an evolution in Cautious’s creative process, the project transcended genre and blended pop precision with elements of alternative R&B, jazz, and indie rock with open-ended reflection. He followed it in fall 2025 with The Hours: Night, which kicked up the tempo with its funk-infused sound, including a collaboration with Q-Tip and Raphael Saadiq on “5th Floor (10PM).” Together, The Hours: Morning and The Hours: Night sketch two interconnected portraits of time: daylight measured against moonlight, order against freedom, routine against spontaneity. The true challenge comes with High Noon, a time of day Cautious finds more nebulous in its atmosphere.
Beyond his own artistry, Cautious Clay has established himself as a highly sought-after songwriter and producer, collaborating with Billie Eilish, John Mayer, John Legend, Khalid, Kavinsky, Melanie Martinez, Remi Wolf, and Tycho. Following the release of his acclaimed EPs Resonance and Table of Context, he delivered his full-length 2021 debut Deadpan Love, a nuanced exploration of the complexities of human connection that earned praise from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The FADER, PAPER, and more. With his 2023 album KARPEH, Cautious reached new artistic heights, delivering a more intentional and sonically rich project that offered an intimate portrait of his journey, his past, and his family life, solidifying his place as a singular voice in modern music.