Before music became his sole focus, Oxfordshire-born Willie J Healey had spent his teenage years boxing. It taught him how to roll with the punches, which came in handy when Columbia Records dropped him after just one album, 2017’s People and Their Dogs. “Getting dropped by a major label was horrible,” Healey told Mojo magazine. “But you can let that be your story or you can dust yourself off and carry on.”

He had to dust himself off a second time when the follow-up, Twin Heavy, released in 2020 as the pandemic was reshaping the world, also failed to make a breakthrough. But lockdown did offer him a new path when his friend Jamie T lent him a drum machine, which made Healey rethink his way of working. The resulting new album, Bunny, represents a great leap forward, with elements of 70s funk newly added to his earlier George Harrison stylings. Indeed, the standout Thank You – featuring Jamie T – has distinct echoes of Sly and the Family Stone.

Earlier this year, Healey’s boxing past once again stood him in good stead when he played in front of huge crowds as support for Florence + the Machine and Arctic Monkeys. “I don’t get stage fright or get nervous,” he told the Independent, “because nothing is as scary as getting beaten up.”

• Bunny is out on 25 August on Yala! Willie J Healey tours the UK in November