Daniel Caesar Wrestles with the Misfire of a New Relationship on "Do You Like Me?"

Daniel Caesar has shared a new music video for his recently released single “Do You Like Me?” a leisurely soulful track that narrates the flirty beginnings of a new relationship. The GRAMMY Award-winning singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer had been relatively quiet since their 2019 sophomore album CASE STUDY 01. But then came a collaboration with BADBADNOTGOOD on the single “Please Do Not Lean” — which also earned them a Juno Awards Nomination.

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On Caesar’s latest single “Do You Like Me?” his warm vocals wander aimlessly around the song’s tender R&B textures, pleading for an answer from the person they now find themselves hopelessly infatuated with. The entire song drifts around this essential but oddly taboo desire for honesty — to cut through all the red tape of the mind and all the games — in order to ascertain what the other person is really thinking.

“Worst case scenario / I get played, but hey, this isn’t my first rodeo,” Caesar sings in a voice with the unguarded intimacy of a whisper. But refusing to be coy about his feelings doesn’t mean there’s no room for playfully enticing the person you’re obsessed with. “Do I titillate your mind?” he asks. Later, Caesar confesses that he’s looking to fall in love after spending far too much time trapped in cynicism (“I hate that I’m so jaded…I wanna be in love again).

The new music video for “Do You Like Me?” directed by the duo Machine Operated imagines the song soundtracking and voicing a heated argument between Caesar and the woman he’s smitten by. Which stems according to the video from her discovery of a photo picturing him with another woman — possibly the mutual “friend” he mentions in the song. Inside the warmly lit and cozy confines of the home they’re in, the two act out their argument in slow motion before Caesar’s new lover slams the bedroom door in his face.