LOKII Puts the RTBO Single Out Twice in October, Pop Built for Dancing by a Neural Engineer
LOKII Puts the RTBO Single Out Twice in October, Pop Built for Dancing by a Neural Engineer
A Neural Engineer in the United States Turns a Band-Aid Idea Into Pop for Dancing
LOKII released the single RTBO – Rip That Band-Aid Off on 30 October 2026. The same song had first come out as plain RTBO four weeks earlier. The artist, based in Pittsburgh, United States, makes pop built for dancing. That happens alongside a day job in neural engineering. The double life is what makes this first single worth noting.
LOKII’s RTBO is in our pop playlist below, and the full run of coverage sits on the LOKII artist profile. The single came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Press play, then read on for what came before it and what comes next.
Before RTBO, LOKII Was Building Circuits and Machine-Learning Models for Neural Engineering
Back to where it started, then. LOKII’s own introduction is short: the name is Lokesh, LOKII for short, and the artist grew up in Chennai, India. LOKII finished at Purdue in 2025 and is now at Carnegie Mellon. The music has one stated aim: to make LOKII and other people want to dance. It sits beside work on circuits and machine-learning models for neural engineering.
That is an unusual starting point for a pop career, and it explains how focused this first release is. There is one song, built with a small team. Then it went out a second time under its full title, so nobody has to guess what the letters stand for.
The double track also has a famous precedent in dance music. Dan Snaith, who records as Caribou, finished a doctorate in mathematics before his dance records found a wide audience. He never treated the two as rivals. His album Andorra won Canada’s Polaris Music Prize in 2008. LOKII is at the very beginning of a similar path, with the science and the songs running side by side. The comparison shows that a lab and a club can belong to the same life.
RTBO by LOKII Arrived Twice in October, First as a Single Called RTBO, Then Under Its Full Title
The first RTBO came out on 2 October. The second, on 30 October, carries the full title, Rip That Band-Aid Off. It runs the same three minutes and 48 seconds. Putting a song out again under a clearer name is a practical move for a new act. Anyone who hears the phrase and searches for it can now find the track. The phrase is about doing the painful thing quickly instead of dragging it out. So it fits a song designed to get people moving rather than brooding.
LOKII, credited as Lokesh Sriram, wrote the words and music and produced the track. Karthikvamsi programmed it and played the drums. Aswin George John mixed it, Toby Joseph mastered it and Lijesh Kumar TK recorded the vocals.
The stated aim, getting people to dance, puts the single in a lane that Dua Lipa made central to mainstream pop. Her 2020 album Future Nostalgia was built for movement and won the Grammy for best pop vocal album. It showed how far a record can travel when it is honest about wanting a dancefloor. RTBO starts from the same honesty on a much smaller scale.
What Comes Next for LOKII After RTBO, Starting With the Official Music Video
What comes next is already visible. An official music video and a lyric video now sit on the artist’s YouTube channel. So the song has the visual side a dance record needs. A dance single lives or dies on whether people move to it. Video is where that usually starts now, in short clips and shared routines.
The next test is simple. Will those videos carry RTBO to the dancefloors it was written for? And will the second release give the song the clear name it needs to be found? This is for listeners who like their pop direct and danceable. It is also for anyone curious about what happens when an engineer decides the next project should make people move.
MusicDrops.News’s curator team: “Start with the music video, then play RTBO on its own. The idea is simple and the delivery matches it: one song, one aim, and no wasted minutes.”
It starts with a scientist’s focus and ends where any good dance record should, on the floor.
Stream RTBO on Apple Music and watch the lyric video. Follow LOKII on Spotify, Instagram, TikTok, X and Facebook.
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