This is our track of the day. Be sure to subscribe to The Best Songs of 2018 (So Far)for regular updates.What It IsFor the past 20 years, Koze is the clown prince of German electronic music. First as a hip-hop DJ and then later as a outre house producer. He’s unique because he takes a lot of chances, and he does a lot of stuff that is formally interesting -- check out the clomping wood box on “Magical Boy” -- but his tracks feel less serious and more whimsical and fun. His previous album, 2013’s Amygdala -- is one of the most adventurous and approachable electronic albums of this decade, and his upcoming album, Knock Knock, is one of the more anticipated albums of this year. “Illumination” is the second single from the album.What It Sounds Like“Illuminations” is surprisingly straightforward. As where some of the producer’s other work felt as if it wandered into its own brilliance, this track feels more focused and immediate. The drums are forefronted and looped over the entirety of the track, and though there’s an occasional guitar line or synth swell, the basic structure never veers into abstraction. The track is build around the punchy vocals of Moloko frontwoman Róisín Murphy. Unlike other Koze tracks, “Illumination” is hard to imagine as an instrumental -- the production is great, but it largely services the vocals. It’s a little bit of a stretch to call this a banger, but it’s has enough of a pulse that it’s not difficult to imagine it lighting up certain dance floors.Suggested Playlist PlacementA “wake and bake” playlist for mornings when you never went to slept.

The work of late hip-hop musician J Dilla is particularly suited to the record industry’s strategy of releasing anything a dead icon has created, no matter how modest or inessential. When he was alive, he would hand out CDs full of beats and short instrumental loops to his friends and collaborators. After he passed away in 2006, those same discs became fodder for bootlegs like J Dilla Anthology and Instrumental Joints Volume 1.However, the recent deluge of Dilla’s posthumously released material has tested the wallets of even his most fanatic disciples. There are remastered projects that didn’t get a full airing during his lifetime, like last year’s The Diary—a proper version of his shelved and oft-bootlegged 2002 album Pay Jay—and his extended Detroit crew has repurposed his beats with fresh vocals that are “produced by J Dilla” for Rebirth of Detroit, Yancey Boys’ Sunset Blvd. (a group comprised of Dilla’s brother Illa J and Frank Nitt), and Slum Village’s Villa Manifesto. Most of all, Yancey Media Group, a label established by his mother, Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey, has issued official collections of his beats: Dillatronic, The King of Beats, Lost Tapes, Reels + More, Dillatroit, and much more. Perhaps overwhelmed by the thousands of beats Dilla made in his life, the label has developed an annoying, even if unintentional, tendency to reuse material on different projects—for example, track 31 on Dillatronic is the same as track 663 on Jay Dee’s Ma Dukes Collection.This playlist attempts to sift through the wellspring of Dilla’s recordings to pick out some gems. There isn’t much background information on when these tracks were made, but a knowledgeable Dilla fan can pick out some clues: The King of Beats collection seems typical of his mid-’90s jazzy hip-hop period when he worked with The Pharcyde and A Tribe Called Quest; Dillatronic reflects his early-’00s, pre-Donuts years and his techno-inflected trunk music. A handful of vocal selections from The Diary and Yancey Boys round out this primer that will prepare you for a deep dive into the world of Dilla.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

This is a track of the day. Be sure to subscribe to The Best Songs of 2018 (So Far)for regular updates.What It IsA meeting of the minds. On one side, afrofuturist chanteuse turned technicolor neu-glam enthusiast Janelle Monáe; on the other, Montreal retro-futurist, electro-wallflower-turned-pop-music-debutante Grimes. This is the second time they’ve collaborated (the first was on Grimes’ single “Venus Fly”), and is the second single from Monáe’s upcoming Dirty Computer album, which we’re hoping will evolve into an extended mash-up of Prince’s Dirty and Radiohead’s OK Computer.What It Sounds LikeLike the best bop from the radically queer future we’re all hoping for. Or maybe an anthropomorphic lullaby from our eventual alien masters, who’ve derived their knowledge of the human race by watching old David Bowie and Erykah Badu videos. Or maybe, more directly, like the maximalist experimental pop of Grimes’ last album Arts Angels crossed with the pan-sexual, slightly roboticized R&B that Monáe has been mining for most of her career.Playlists PlacementA “coming out” playlist for family or friends, perhaps. A road mix for space travel, maybe. The best tracks of 2018…definitely.

This is our track of the day. Be sure to subscribe to The Best Songs of 2018 (So Far) for regular updates.What It IsIt’s a little hard to believe that 2018 marks the 30th anniversary of the emergence of Sade. The Nigerian British singer is the queen of the slow jam; her lulling missives to the arts of seduction and sensuality are anchored in airy instrumental and her smokey voice. It’s refined sound, and Sade makes make-out music for people who want to keep it classy. After a seven-year break, she returns with this track for The Wrinkle in Time soundtrack.What It Sounds LikeEven by Sade standards, “Flower of the Universe” is particularly delicate. A hand-plucked guitar figure wraps around refrained vocal coos, with the occasional piano fill. But, as always, the star is Sade. She’s simply hypnotic here, sounding more maternal than carnel, and the track has a stark warmth and intimacy that is really unmatched in today’s pop landscape. Suggested Playlist PlacementA post-coliotal cuddling playlist would be perfect.

Listen to Partners delightful debut album, In Search of Lost Time, and you will quickly learn that Canadas foremost queer-positive fuzz-pop duo are also massive potheads. For this Dowsers playlist, they reveal the songs they like to crank up when they spark up. "Stoner," Young Thug: This song is cool because, while there are a lot of odes to weed, this song is a little different: Its an ode to stoners. Young Thug thinks stoners are cool and is proud to be one. Plus, this track just buuumps."Cotton Eye Joe," Rednex: This song is good to get stoned to just cause its really hilarious and a total throwback to middle-school dances. No matter how lazy you are feeling, you might be able to muster a jig. Bonus points for the weird/scary video."Sweet Leaf," Black Sabbath: The original ode to weed. "You introduced me/ to my mind." SAME. Possibly the only song written in the second person, directed at weed, that doesnt use the term "Mary Jane.""Really Doe," Danny Brown: This song is great to get stoned to cause its a sick posse cut featuring a really cool stylistic array of rappers. Earls verse shouts out dirty spliffs and blunts. Everyones flow is completely different and they are all very impressive, especially when youre stoned."James Joint," Rihanna: "Id rather be/ smoking weed." Lots of people love to smoke weed, but Rihanna somehow also manages to make blazing seem glamorous and sexy. (Impressive.)"Solo," Frank Ocean: Like Rihanna, when Frank talks about smoking weed, it seems sophisticated and deep. This is a great track to listen to when youre blazing alone, at night, wondering what it all means..."Broccoli," DRAM (feat Lil Yachty): DRAM is all "good vibes" if thats what youre into, and this is a feel-good party-jam ode to rolling one up at a party. Infectious piano hook."HennyNHoes," Young M.A.: This is a good song to listen to at any time, and we will never not shout it out cause its our favourite and Young M.A. is cool as fuck."You Dont Know How It Feels," Tom Petty: This song is great to get stoned to cause when it gets to the part where he says, "lets rollll another joiiint," you can use it as an excuse to do just that."Dust on the Bottle," David Lee Murphy: This song is about homemade wine, not weed, but its great to get stoned to, cause it tells a great story and, lets be real, all music is good when youre stoned.

This is our track of the day. Be sure to subscribe to The Best Songs of 2018 (So Far)for regular updates.What It IsEverything is Recorded is the solo project from XL Recordings head honcho Richard Russell. If you imagine yourself a connoisseur of hip sounds then you should already know XL Recordings. But, if you somehow missed that one, check the back of your M.I.A., Jamie XX, White Stripes, Thom Yorke, and The xx. Yeah, it’s a stack discography.What It Sounds LikeIt sounds like the Beach Boys and Pharrell Williams went on a summer picnic together and blasted dub reggae while Stevie Wonder served prosciutto and manchego. A track that appears on a label head’s vanity project, and features four guests, two of which (Kamasi Washington and Sampha) are certified buzzbin legends, is likely going to disappoint you. And while no one reinvents the wheel here, this shit is tasty. Playlists PlacementIf you find yourself on a picnic with Brian Wilson and Pharrell Williams, give us a call. We’d love to hang. Then slip this onto the playlist.

Playlists allow you to play the role of musical tourist, immersing you in a regional scene on the other side of the world without the need for airfare. Or sometimes, the scene is less a geographic construct than a spiritual one, coalescening around a record label or common, internet-facilitated aesthetic. These are the scenes we were drawn to over the past year:

Seattle’s Rap Underground

The emergence of a viable rap scene in Seattle didn’t happen overnight. Even as Macklemore & Ryan Lewis briefly took over the pop airwaves with “Thrift Shop” in 2012, less-celebrated artists were determining the future of the Northwest city’s sound. In fact, much of the Seattle rap underground resembles other U.S. homegrown scenes that formed in the wake of indie rap icons like Lil B and Odd Future: The music is amorphous and electronic, the lyrics tend toward chemically enhanced streams-of-consciousness (with Shabazz Palaces’ surreal, Afrocentric-inspired treatises serving as a touchstone), and there are enough sonic quirks to make you want to crawl down a SoundCloud wormhole.

Profound Lore Records

Profound Lore was founded in 2004 by Chris Bruni as a casual venture, but within a few years it grew to be a serious metal label. Based in Kitchener, Ontario—about an hour’s drive west of Toronto—Profound Lore has produced some of the most vital voices in contemporary black, experimental, and heavy metal.

Killer Sounds From the Chicago Underground

Chicago’s underground has been on fire the past few years. Every other week seems to deliver a new batch of releases from the Hausu Mountain label, purveyors of madcap electronics and cyborg-bopping eccentricity. The shadowy Beau Wanzer, whose icy and forlorn productions disintegrate the divide between post-punk and techno, is nearly as prolific—and that’s just one dude. And then there’s Jaime Fennelly’s always progressing Mind Over Mirrors project: his latest album, the critically lauded Undying Color, wanders dense, rippling expanses of pastoral art folk and baroque électronique. For this playlist, we focus primarily on musicians, bands, and oddball geniuses who stalk the back alleys, linking DIY electronics, industrial, droning experimentation, and mutant dance music.

Future Islands’ Baltimore

Maybe it’s the cheap rent that’s essential for sustaining the vitality and vibrancy of artists and culture in a modern metropolis, or maybe it’s the proximity to beloved landmarks and bit players from The Wire and the movies of John Waters; either way, Baltimore continues to thrive as a musical hotbed, one that retains a fierce loyalty among the many great acts born and bred there. With the release of Future Islands’ fifth album, The Far Field, we celebrated the city’s indie scene with a playlist of Baltimore acts you may already know and love (Beach House, Dan Deacon), and others who deserve more than hometown-hero status, like Ed Schrader’s Music Beat and relative newbies Sun Club.

L.A.’s Best Young Rappers

Los Angeles rappers have a propensity for giving themselves two letter names. YG is the city’s most well-known export, but there’s also RJ, AD, T.F, and KR. Most of these artists have collaborated with each other, and are a hit or two away from breaking through at the national level. This playlist contains songs by these two-letter rappers, as well as the rest of the city’s best young talent.

The Best of Dais Records

On what feels like a weekly basis nowadays, Dais Records revive some long-forgotten synth/ambient masterpiece or a vintage industrial jam that’s exquisitely dark and dreary. Dais isn’t just an archival label, however—their catalog features churning brutality from hardcore-troublemakers-turned-EBM-fist-pumpers Youth Code, and Sightings, the most important noise-rock band of the 21st century. And not everything Dais puts out seeks to obliterate eardrums: On top of their taste for the ugly and abrasive, they have a deep love for the beautiful and sublime.

The Best New South African Music

Home to international stars like Hugh Masekela, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and, um, Die Antwoord, South Africa has always been known for its music. Even during the days of apartheid, this country of 55 million people was a hotbed for pop, jazz, choral, and dance music. While Paul Simon worked with South African musicians back in the 1980s to make his career-defining album Graceland, these days it’s artists and label heads like Kode9 who are looking to the country amid the rising global popularity of gqom, the moody, broken-beat take on South African house that was first divined with the help of cracked Fruity Loops setups in the coastal city of Durban.

The World of Afrobeats

Afrobeats is the sound you heard on pop radio for much of 2016. It’s not to be confused with Afrobeat, the funk-based form that Fela Kuti made famous in the 1970s. Afrobeats emerged from Lagos, Nigeria and Accra, Ghana in the mid-to-late 2000s, and serves as an African response to post-millennial hip-hop, electronic music, Jamaican reggae and dancehall, and R&B. There are tracks that rely on familiar tropes—Auto-Tuned vocals, English-language lyrics about partying and sex—as well as build upon distinctive traditions like highlife and Afrobeat, resulting in songs that could only be African.

The Best Latin American Shoegaze

As cassette tapes and CDs proliferated in the ‘80 and ‘90s, music began to travel to uncharted territories—like small villages in South America. And thanks to the vast reach of MTV and, later the internet, that cultural cross-pollination has only accelerated. One of the more intriguing results of this process has been the rise of Latin American shoegaze: young South American musicians in thrall to U.K. bands like My Bloody Valentine and Ride, but putting their own spin on the genre.

A Brief History of SoundCloud Rap

SoundCloud rap sounds like an extension of a thread that arguably began in 2010 with Odd Future. As the genre of rap becomes more notional than actual—lyrics are harmonized and sung in barely recognizable hip-hop cadences, and beats are reduced to murky approximations of a boom-bap tempo—MCs trade form for texture, and professionalism for bellicosity. SoundCloud rappers are representative of the genre’s post-regional phase, when it’s no longer uncommon for a Philadelphia hook-man like Lil Uzi to sound like a trapper from Atlanta, a Texas melodicist like Post Malone to sound like a rapper/singer from Chicago, or a Florida bedroom producer like SpaceGhostPurrp to sound like a gangster from Memphis.

Sweet Apple is the power-pop supergroup featuring vocalist John Petkovic and guitarist Tim Parnin of Cobra Verde, and bassist Dave Sweetapple and drummer J. Mascis of Witch. (You may also know the latter from another band.) To mark the release of their second album, Sing the Night in Sorrow, Petkovic created this special Dowsers playlist featuring songs from the record, and the classic tracks that directly inspired them. Here, he breaks down the albums key influences on a song-by-song basis.SONG: "(My Head is Stuck in the) Traffic"INSPIRATION: “Girl U Want” by Devo“(My Head is Stuck in the) Traffic”—the opening track on our album, Sing the Night in Sorrow—features this driving, jagged riff on the verse. The obvious thing would have been to pair it with straight-ahead drums, but it wouldn’t have provided the kind of tension we were shooting for. Devo are one of the pioneers of the “herky-jerky” rhythm with songs like “Girl U Want,” “Mongoloid” or even “Whip It.” Devo popped into my head right away because they embraced the tension between guitar and drums. As a whole, none of those Devo songs sound all that much “Traffic,” but if you listen to the hi-hat and where it fits, and the loopiness of the rhythm, they owe a debt to Devo.SONG: “World I’m Gonna Leave You”INSPIRATION: The theme song from Get SmartI was flipping through the TV late at night and was stopped by the theme song to the 1960s secret-agent spoof Get Smart. The riff just sounded so bad-ass—these boisterous horns blaring out this punchy melody with this incessant rhythm underneath it. Right away, I hit pause and picked up a guitar and started playing along until that riff turned into something very different—which became the basis for “World I’m Gonna Leave You.”SONG: “You Dont Belong to Me”INSPIRATION: “Tubular Bells - Pt. 1” by Mike OldfieldOn the surface or in any other way, “Tubular Bells” sounds nothing like the Sweet Apple song. But the opening to Oldfield’s song, made popular by The Exorcist, always resonated with me because it features a circular note pattern played with layers of instruments. The strategy matched what we were trying to do with a note pattern played by Tim on acoustic and electric guitars on the intro and outro of what is otherwise a power-pop song.SONG: “A Girl and a Gun”INSPIRATIONS: The soundtrack to Duck You Sucker, and “Man With Harmonica” from the soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in the WestBoth of these Ennio Morricone soundtracks roll out sprawling themes. They also boast so many stellar details: A plucked banjo that acts more as an uneasy marker of time than an instrument; a detuned note played in unison with another to create a warbled melody; an incidental sound; those warped harmonicas; those haunting, weird vocals. “A Girl and a Gun” features all sorts of sounds that might not specifically sound like Morricone’s soundtracks, but there’s a similar strategy at work with the strummed autoharp, the layered vocals, the out-of-tune synth lead, and the warped toy piano. Meanwhile, the plucked banjo is straight out of these soundtracks.SONG: “She Wants to Run”INSPIRATION: The soundtrack to The Royal TenenbaumsI like some Wes Anderson films, but the sheer amount of whimsy in the scores borders on empty signifiers. I wanted to capture that kind of whimsy in the acoustic opening to “She Wants to Run," only to follow it by having a rock n roll band bust down the door and smash their acoustics and turn up the amps. So we recorded the sound of a cord being plugged into an electric guitar jack and then having a loud rock band blowing the acoustic troupe away.SONG: “Candles in the Sun”INSPIRATIONS: "Cocaine and Camcorders," by UNKLE and South from the Sexy Beast soundtrack + "Hey Bulldog" by The BeatlesThe UNKLE contributions to the Sexy Beast soundtrack boast these pulsating drones that make the songs mesmerizing, because they keep throbbing along even as other parts come in and out and change. The notes and instruments are different, but the guitar riff provides a similar function, pushing along even as chords modulate. As for the guitar tone, check out George Harrison on later-period Beatles songs, like “Hey Bulldog” or “I Want You (Shes So Heavy).”SONG: “Summers Gone”INSPIRATION: “The Great Dominions” by The Teardrop ExplodesThe idea of doing some sunny ode to the end of summer in a place where the sun doesn’t shine often was the basis for the song. It features sunny back-up vocals, but there is also a drone throughout the song. A song that incorporated the drone to moody effect so well is “The Great Dominions,” by Julian Cope’s early band The Teardrop Explodes. The drones continue throughout and in many ways glue the song together with this deep, hypnotic underpinning that gives it a sense of foreboding menace.SONG: “Thank You”INSPIRATION: "Saturday Night Special" by Lynyrd SkynyrdThe perception of Lynyrd Skynyd as some "southern-rock" band overshadows just how great and timeless the production is on the band’s records—from the guitar and bass sounds to the deep snap of the snare. When we went into this one, I was imagining that snare run recorded really hot—ditto for the guitars.SONG: “Crying in the Clouds”INSPIRATION: “Morning Sun Rays,” by Popol VuhThe German group created a number of stellar soundtracks for Werner Herzog and so few groups managed to make the acoustic guitar so evocative and otherworldly—especially when combined with other string and wind instruments. The Sweet Apple song features six- and 12-string acoustics paired with a droning harmonica and a toy accordion, as well as a collage of various instruments in the middle part. While it doesn’t sound like anything Popol Vuh, it embraced the group’s expansive view of acoustic music.SONG: “Everybodys Leaving”INSPIRATION: “By the TIme I Get to Phoenix,” Glen CampbellSongs about leaving are bound to be moody and full of longing and loss, but how do you convey that without being melodramatic? Glen Campbell hit it with the string arrangements on the Jimmy Webb-penned classic “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” It’s accentuated with the breezy pacing of his vocals and the space to breathe in the music—which makes it all the more evocative. “Everybody’s Leaving” might be a very different-sounding song, but there was a general strategy at work—and we hoped these little layers, like the echo-y electric piano on the bridge, accentuated a similar atmosphere.

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