Since we’ve been talking about music today and pop stars making art and music videos, why not bring in another music act/music artist/pop artist from Los Angeles that we’re actually digging quite a bit? While reading Pitchfork earlier this week, we caught wind of LA native and R&B musician Miguel who we had never heard of and, given how he’s being branded, never would have cared about if we hadn’t checked out his latest music, which is a new, fun, risky take on the genre through his new EP collection Art Dealer Chic.

Miguel is most well known for his 2010/2011 hits “Sure Thing” and “All I Want Is You,” both of which were fairly successful although we had never heard of them until today. Art Dealer Chic sees the release of three EPs he released this year which match his really smooth and pretty voice to pretty raw electronic and R&B beats, making for a very sexy combination (as cheesy as that sounds, his song “Arch n Point” proves this). None of them are very traditional takes on the genre, no wailing over slightly operatic synths or pianos or–like the current big R&B stars–none of it is shitty hard NRG house: he brings this rockstar sensibility to his R&B and the result lands him as a male version of equally talented, respected, and risk taking mainstream R&B artists like Cassie and duo Nina Sky.

Now, we’re not necessarily sure how the whole “art dealer” element comes into this but, sure, we’ll grant him that title because it is good music. The first volume of the three stood out most for us, the song “Adorn” being his thesis for why he is really, really great. The second and third volumes are good as well, them standing as the ones where he wanders out of the genre and bends it into 2012 musical mishmash. Take a listen to the first volume below and, if you like what you hear, you can download all three for free courtesy of his website.