Of Your Touch by Zhenyok Chem Brat, Revisited as Lay Your Heart Down Follows Two Years Later
A Napa Studio Drummer Built a Funk-Pop Single with Players From Around the World
The name began as a joke on holiday. Zhenyok Chem Brat is the project of producer and drummer Jeff Craft. Its first song was made on a trip to St Petersburg, where his attempt at Russian produced a phrase his Russian colleagues found funny enough to keep. Zhenyok Chem Brat released Of Your Touch, a funk-tinged pop single built with players from around the world, two years ago, and a new single called Lay Your Heart Down arrived on 30 October 2026.
Zhenyok Chem Brat has Of Your Touch in the playlist below, the single Jeff Craft built with players from around the world, and the project’s coverage is collected on the Zhenyok Chem Brat artist profile. It came to NewMusic.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Press play, then read on for what came next.
Zhenyok Chem Brat Returns on 30 October 2026 With Lay Your Heart Down, Two Years After Of Your Touch
The return is short and to the point. Lay Your Heart Down runs to 2:39, and it is the first new song from Zhenyok Chem Brat since September 2024. That makes this a good moment to go back to the single before it. The story behind the name is worth hearing too.
At first, Jeff Craft worked as a drummer and became a studio player in demand. Along the way he taught himself guitar, bass and keyboards. Then, during the pandemic, he learned production with the house producer Pierce Fulton. He formed Zhenyok Chem Brat in 2021, and he also works as a local DJ.
As for the name, its literal translation is a string of words that do not belong together. It runs: rapper, tough guy, Jeff, how, brother. He kept it anyway, because he believes humour is one of the best ways to bring people together through music.
The catalogue grew one single at a time. Love and War arrived as a remix in December 2021, with Danny Spade and Tara Louise. Let the Music Flow followed in August 2022, and that song is still his most-played, at 57,678 plays on Spotify. Get Hot, from February 2023, follows at 44,808.
Of Your Touch Puts Kimberly Morrel in Front of a Band Jeff Craft Gathered From Around the World
Of Your Touch came out on 20 September 2024, and the credits read like a band. Jeff Craft wrote the words and the music, produced the track and played the drums. Anthony Sylvester played electric guitar, Luca Giachi played bass and Chris Commiso played keyboard. Kimberly Morrel took the lead vocal, with Molly on backing vocals.
They were not in one room. According to Muse Chronicle, Craft recorded the parts with musicians from around the world in his home studio. Even so, the result sounds like one group playing to one groove.
In other words, it is a mid-paced pop record built on that groove. A female lead carries the song. In the middle section, the vocal breaks into short chopped fragments before the band returns. The radio edit runs to 2:45 and has 21,472 plays on Spotify.
The song is about love and how it ends. In an interview with Punk Head, Craft pointed to the breakdown. That is where the record expresses the end of a relationship, in the music and in the voice. He also explained how he picks collaborators, looking for players and singers who fit the groove, with egos left outside.
From the NewMusic.News curator team: “Of Your Touch sits fifth in our Pop, Art Pop, Singer-Songwriter Pop playlist, straight after Andrew Bird’s Manifest and below Feist’s My Moon My Man. It brings the most groove into that run of songwriters. We would play it to anyone who wants funk and pop in the same breath.”
Daft Punk and Mark Ronson Show What Of Your Touch by Zhenyok Chem Brat Answers About Producer-Led Funk-Pop
The question the single answers is how a producer and drummer makes a band record without a band in one place. For example, two famous records show the scale of that idea.
Daft Punk recruited session musicians for Random Access Memories to put live playing back into dance music. Nile Rodgers, Nathan East and Omar Hakim were among them. Its lead single, Get Lucky, topped the charts in more than 30 countries, and the album then won Album of the Year at the 2014 Grammy Awards.
Mark Ronson, a DJ and producer like Craft, built Uptown Funk around a guest voice, Bruno Mars. The song spent 14 consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Of Your Touch follows the same plan on a smaller scale. The producer sits at the centre, a guest singer stands in front and the players hold the groove.
Start with Of Your Touch, then play Lay Your Heart Down to hear where Zhenyok Chem Brat has gone since.
Follow Zhenyok Chem Brat on Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X and YouTube, visit the Zhenyok Chem Brat website, play Get Hot on Apple Music, and stream Of Your Touch on Spotify or Apple Music.
