Here’s a mysterious pairing you probably never saw coming: Macklemore and Kesha. Ben Haggerty and Kesha Rose Sebert. Thrift shopper and Tik Tok’er. Any way you spin it, this combo is strange... but, oh, it’s happening, folks.

This afternoon (January 17), Mack alerted us of their apparent friendship by posting a pic on Instagram. There she is, leaning on his shoulder. There he is, wearing bejeweled heart-shaped sunglasses, for some reason.

Disappointingly, Macklemore didn’t say much by way of a caption, opting to pair the pic with just emojis of a crystal ball and a tiger. What could that possibly mean? Well, we know Mack’s a big cat lover. We also know Kesha’s a feline fan, considering she posted a pic of a tiger last week and wrote, “I want cats to fill my 2017. I'm going to manifest cats.” So... maybe they were just bonding over kittens together?

That seems unlikely, so what about the crystal ball? Well, it may mean a collaboration is coming. Less than a year ago, Zedd alerted the world to his “True Colors” collab with Kesha by posting a pic of them in the studio. It was captioned by a single crystal ball emoji: the same one used by Macklemore. We know Kesha’s working on her long-awaited new album — she previously teased a collab with Eagles of Death Metal, as well as a new song made with “a casual Grammy award winning secret person.” Hmm... Macklemore & Ryan Lewis do have four Grammys to their name. Just sayin’.

The most believable explanation, then, seems to be that these two are cooking up new music together, which could go one of two ways. On the one hand, both artists have a track record of massive, fun, party-starting hits: she has “Tik Tok,” “Blow,” and “Die Young,” for example, while he and Lewis have “Thrift Shop,” “Can’t Hold Us,” and “Downtown.” It’s reasonable to guess they’d team up for a single worthy of an absurdly awesome, fiesta-fueled video.

That is, unless they opt to go a more serious route. Macklemore’s tackled social justice issues on singles like “Same Love,” “White Privilege II,” and “Drug Dealer.” And Kesha — who’s spent years in label limbo amidst her ongoing litigation against alleged abuser Dr. Luke — has taken a slightly more subdued approach to her music lately (see: her mellow performances of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” and Lady Gaga’s “’Til It Happens To You”). If she wanted to aim for a more mellow vibe with her new tunes, Macklemore could ostensibly help her with that.

Whatever the case may be, Kesha fans have been waiting nearly five years for a new album, and, Mack or no Mack, her return to music will surely be one worth celebrating.