The follow-up to 2012’s The World from the Side of the Moon, Phillips’s sop­homore album Behind The Light finds the 23-year-old Georgia native offering up a batch of songs marked by a more ambitious and refined sensibility but still powered by the earthy authenticity that’s long shaped his sound. With each song written or co-written by Phillips, Behind The Light also showcases the guitar skills he began honing by learning to play at age 14 and recently sharpened by joining Matchbox Twenty and John Mayer on tour and sharing a stage with Bruce Springsteen at the 2013 Rock in Rio festival.

To record Behind The Light , Phillips again teamed up with Gregg Wattenberg (the Grammy-nominated producer behind The World From The Side Of The Moon, as well as releases from Five for Fighting, Goo Goo Dolls, Train, and O.A.R.). Holing up in New York City’s Quad Studios in the middle of last year’s brutal winter—and joining forces with the musicians who form his tight-knit live band—Phillips dedicated himself to broadening his impassioned brand of rock with an edgy ingenuity he’s newly explored through such artists as Radiohead and Peter Gabriel. Moodier and more darkly charged but full of arena-sized rock anthems, Behind The Light features lead single “Raging Fire,” an epic and urgent love song that debuted in the Billboard Hot 100 upon its March release and quickly earned raves for Phillips’s stirring vocal delivery and thrilling guitar work.