Callie is back with this week’s playlist. Picture this: you’re huddled inside a massive sweatshirt with your feet digging into cold sand. The sky is saturated with stars; the moon is reflecting against a dark blue ocean. It’s the perfect temperature and all your friends are sitting in a circle, drinking beer and telling stories. This playlist is warbling softly from a portable speaker. It’s the kind of summer night when everything feels hazy and timeless. Listen to the playlist here. 

  1. “Don’t Fade” – JGrrey. “Blue and silver, pink and red” is how JGrrey describes conversations with her lover, but it also happens to be the perfect description for how this song sounds. “Don’t Fade” is at once atmospheric and tropical — almost humid (as she expresses with the masterful, deceptively simple sentiment: “I’d die tonight in color”).
  2. “Where Did I Go?” – Jorja Smith. The standout single from Jorja Smith’s debut album vibrates with buttery, tender emotion — or, as Pitchfork describes her signature style, “emotionally raw minimalism.” Her voice glides dizzyingly, effortlessly, like a drizzle of truffle on top of a simple dish.
  3. “BLEACH” – BROCKHAMPTON. “BLEACH” embodies the intersection of “rap group” and “boy band” that Brockhampton has single-handedly pioneered and populated. The boys’ chemistry is obvious and manifests in sharp, lively, purposeful music that fills your whole body.
  4. “LSF” – Kasabian. If this song gives you flashbacks to sitting in the backseat and watching your cool dad bop his head in the rearview mirror, listening to his favorite CDs and singing along to every word, then cool — same!
  5. “Sit Next to Me” – Foster The People. This is the kind of lithe, vivid melody that you’ll never get tired of. “Sit Next to Me” is not quite chipper enough to fit in with a soundtrack to summer’s white-hot sunlight — but it has just enough edge and ether to float in the air around your campfire.
  6. “Me and Michael” – MGMT. While MGMT may never strike the exact, perfect brand of magic from “Electric Feel,” that doesn’t mean they don’t create consistently magical music. This song is an especially exceptional sample from the band’s most recent album; it is equal parts bright and moody, upbeat and unflustered.
  7. “Reborn” – KIDS SEE GHOSTS. It’s clear from Kanye West’s most recent efforts that he needs a calming, quixotic energy like Kid Cudi’s to balance his chaos. “Reborn” sees the two artists work in focused harmony. It is rich with both sobering self-awareness and bright optimism; it hums with scraps of poetry and humanity.
  8. “20 Something” – SZA. SZA has a voice that strikes your heart with simultaneous jolts of empathy, nostalgia, and sanguinity. “20 Something,” in particular, illustrates the nebulousness of maturity — while recalling and inspiring the sort of blind confidence that you need to grow up. It’s moody, uncertain, and yet carefree.
  9. “Take Care” – Beach House. Beach House makes music that drips with sunlight and humidity. “Take Care” also happens to drip with romanticism and melancholy — and illuminates the feeling of being homesick for a person or a moment, rather than a place.
  10. “Summer Games” – Drake. Drake name-drops “a night in July” in this track, which basically means it would be a crime not to let him close this playlist. But in all seriousness, “Summer Games” is a gorgeously multi-faceted song with many moods; in short, it’s a song made for sipping cocktails while sitting on the sofa in a magenta-colored club, silently judging everyone but secretly having fun.