Rüfüs du Sol – No Place

The Australian trio of Rüfüs du Sol has been creating deep, melodic dance music for almost eight years now, but new single “No Place” might be their most earworm-y track yet. Both their previous albums have hit number one in New Zealand and their home country, but there’s been limited crossover across the Pacific Ocean. With this track, there’s all the hallmarks of a great Rüfüs song — a big chasmic bassline and haunting vocals. What’s new is in the chorus, where the beat doubles down, some finger snaps slide in, and some background “ooh’s” arrive, all adding to the euphoric peak of the song. Sure, the lyrics remind you of that Clean Bandit song (and the dumb opening riff), but once you get past the comparisons, it’s a song that stands on its own, and will probably go down as the group’s most successful track to date.

Vorhees – Black Horse Pike (Slowdive Remix)

Of all the festival sets I’ve seen, there was nothing quite as ~*~magical~*~ as seeing Slowdive’s reunion at Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago a few years back. With the sun setting before the headliner sets, the shoegaze-y guitars became totally enthralling, peaking with their emotional eight-minute, guitar solo-filled cover of Syd Barrett’s “Golden Hair”. While Slowdive isn’t a group that remixes that much, they definitely have a way with creating mood — it’s allowed them to buck the trend of bands that go away for 20 years, creating new music that’s sonically engaging, even as the artists creating it have gotten older. Their remix of “Black Horse Pike” is all of that, as acoustic guitars are stretched with reverb, echoes are added to the vocals, and an entirely different genre of music is changed into moody shoegaze.

Justin Timberlake – SoulMate

Okay, as indicated in the deck, this isn’t really a song to get lifted to. Just a few months after Man of the Woods disappointed all corners of the world, then disappeared, Justin Timberlake has returned! His summer single “SoulMate”, with fun spelling just because, might be the final crash of his career jumping the shark — an emotionless, groove-less take on R&B, where the choruses and verses all meld into something 40% as passionate as Bruno Mars. It’s all just kind of sad to me, as someone who got super into FutureSex/LoveSounds. Looking back, though, maybe we all were just young and naive. We’d never heard a song with an interlude before. It was our first time experiencing songs that changed halfway through. “SoulMate” is one of those songs that’s so bad it makes you question everything that came before. Was Timberlake ever that good, or did he just charm us into believing in him? I’m on my X-Files shit, I’ll report back once the truth is found.