Staff Pix: Summer!!!

Welcome back milk crate nation! Here’s what our lovely staff listened to this summer…

“Feisty” by Smerz

There’s what we all thought clubbing was like as children, and then there’s what it actually is. On “Feisty,” the Norwegian art pop duo Smerz are zoomed in on reality. This is the most obnoxious track I’ve heard all year, and I say that as the highest compliment. The droll delivery of couplets like “He likes to seem mysterious, but really he’s just dumb / It’s crowded at the toilet, I check my makeup and my bum” will never cease to make me smirk, and the delightfully sparse electroclash production reminds me of some of the best Peaches and Uffie cuts from the aughts. “Feisty” makes the most boring and cringeworthy moments of the night (the DJ playing a terrible song, seeing an old Tinder match across the bar) feel like moments of true transcendence. — Bennett Himmel

“Love Takes Miles” by Cameron Winter

I mean, has a more life-affirming song come out in the past year, or past few years? Since its release last December, I’ve played “Love Takes Miles” (and the whole album it’s off of) more consistently than almost anything else I’ve ever heard. Just a real soul-warmer of a song, the kind of tune that has you thinking, tearing up and dancing simultaneously, though that also doesn’t discredit the fact that “Love Takes Miles” may also just be the catchiest song ever made. Literally, that chorus is dangerous. I spent the whole first half of the year mumbling the whole song in little non-sequiturs; sometimes it was, “Watching the bells/watching the lights/what I want is far away,” and at other times, “You better start a-walking, babe,” for days on end. “Love Takes Miles” became my mantra, my rock that I would come back to time and again every time I needed a reminder of why it is I love music so much. How Cameron Winter made one of the greatest songs ever so deceptively simple and structurally concise, I will never know. What I do know, though, is that I will never not feel my soul melt a little every time I hear him warble out the words, “I need somebody sent down from the sun that talks to me like you used to.” — Lucca Swain

“Blue Highway” by Billy Idol

Moments turning into hours, days stretching into a season that flashes by, wind blowing in your hair, restless freedom… Billy Idol’s “Blue Highway” perfectly captures summer with its infectious energy. His vocals pump me up every time and the guitar is enough to send me levitating even when I’m behind the wheel. “Blue Highway” was, therefore, 2025’s summer anthem that I blasted in the car while I drove and romanticized suburban roads. — Heather Thorn

“Good Intentions” by Toad the Wet Sprocket 

It was Toad the Wet Sprocket’s downtempo California swagger that brought them brief success in the ‘90s, and “Good Intentions” was the ocean breeze that lingered. In fact, the song has lingered so long in my brain that I not only interviewed frontman Glen Philips back in May, but I went to the band’s concert in August. I used to make fun of bands like Toad for being “mom bands,” but “Good Intentions,” with its organ-dominated musings on effing up, made me realize that moms have good taste (sometimes). If you like your college rock cheese on Alex Chilton crackers, this one’s an irresistible poolside treat. — Charlie Desjardins

“Fall in Love” by Phantogram

A song for this summer and every one from now on, Phantogram’s 2013 track “Fall in Love” tore my world apart. The production quality alone is insane. I mean, the combination of the pulsing synthy bass and Sarah Barthel’s passionately desperate vocals is enough to make me wish to crawl out of my skin, to be a fly on the wall in the sound booth. Plus, knowing that Barthel wrote the lyrics for the beat as an aggressive reclamation of her identity as an artist makes it all the more fun. It’s forcefully driven, painfully catchy, and undeniably danceable. — Sophie Parrish

“Grace” by the Durutti Column

Summer always feels like purgatory to me. Maybe it has to do with school and the regimented break in seasons, or the fact that I’ve gone home to Chicago every summer since leaving. Either way, I float through time: biking aimlessly, working restaurants, playing iSpy with ephemera. The Durutti Column’s guitarless “Grace” was my meditative companion this summer. The beat bounces and skitters hypnotically over an ambient synthline thin as a beam of light through a stained glass window. A tin-like voice chants indecipherable murmurings over and over before glitching out. The amphibious track feels sacred and alien at once. It filled the smallest things with an air of mystery and a touch of grace. — Christian Jones