After over a decade together, Chilean duo Ives Sepúlveda and Manuel Parra explore the murky waters of psych rock with an increasingly open mind as The Holydrug Couple—and the deeper they dive, the more confident they sound. Their woozy landscapes echo the dreamy melancholia of Tame Impala or the nostalgic grooviness of Ariel Pink, but underneath it all is a foundation built on decades of left-field pop and electronic music. Their fifth studio album, 2018’s Hyper Super Mega, pushes some of those influences to the surface, and to help us navigate it all, the duo put together a complementary playlist—one that proves putting Ace of Base between Happy Mondays and Primal Scream makes total sense.Says Ives Sepúlveda of The Holydrug Couple: “The playlist is based around our album Hyper Super Mega. It surrounds some direct influences and some indirect influences that I noticed after finishing the album. Its music that I like, and it has influenced me sonically, lyrically, and compositionally. The name of the playlist—it has to be with the name of the album, mixed with Spanish words. ‘Lista’ means ‘playlist’ but also means ‘ready.’ ‘Meta’ is some sort of synonym of ‘hyper,’ and, you know, ‘mundo’ means ‘world.’”
