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SPIN Singles Mix

SPIN Singles Mix: Chrome Sparks, Blood and Glass, GoldLink, and More

Welcome to SPIN‘s Singles Mix! SPIN staffers have rounded up their favorite, must-hear tracks for your personal playlists. Collecting the finest from electronic pioneers, romantically jilted rappers, Australian cover singers, and more, these are the songs you need to know right now.

SPIN Singles Mix: Chrome Sparks, Blood and Glass, GoldLink, and More

Blond:ish, “Jupiter and Jaguar [Welcome to the Present]” (Kompakt)
The pseudo-title track off of Canadian DJ duo Blond:ish’s debut LP, Welcome to the Present, is anything but. Opening with the grunts and gobbles of your average tropical forest, the six-minute epic forges through the thicket with a trance-inducing weave of deep drums and rain-stick shakes. Such a cosmic voyage through space, time, and travels to India that informed this album illuminate why Anstascia D’Elene and Vivie Ann Bakos have become fixtures in the mystical deserts of Burning Man. — HARLEY BROWN

SPIN Singles Mix: Chrome Sparks, Blood and Glass, GoldLink, and More

Blood and Glass, “In Memory of a Tree” (Mirror Mirror)
Sounding for all the world like Björk’s fantastical, bell simulacra-festooned Vespertine, Montreal’s ethereal Blood and Glass coo and sigh over mechanized ticktocks and plinging metallic bells and chimes on this non-album track; as if Beach House were trapped inside a grandfather clock. The dead can, in fact, dance. — DAN WEISS

SPIN Singles Mix: Chrome Sparks, Blood and Glass, GoldLink, and More

Chrome Sparks, “Moonraker” (Future Classic)
Chrome Sparks’ mellifluous synthesizer expedition on “Moonraker” is indicative of Future Classic‘s flagship “beatsy” aesthetic, which has also become nearly synonymous with the sounds coming out of Sydney and Melbourne — even though the track, off of the producer’s forthcoming Parallelism EP, incorporates field recordings from erstwhile Incan stronghold Machu Picchu. As such, it builds with a slow climb through misty ping-pongs and a softly booming bass line, all accented with down-pitch-shifted coos from Aussie musician Karlie Bruce. — HARLEY BROWN

SPIN Singles Mix: Chrome Sparks, Blood and Glass, GoldLink, and More

Django Django, “Hold The Line” (Ribbon)
There’s no slack in Django Django’s line — just a fun, tension-filled twang. The new track, a B-side off of their single “Shake & Tremble,” is full of the band’s signature rowdy, Fear and Loathing-esque energy, with layers of jittery sounds and rickety vibes slowly building from a vague mirage to a full-blown oasis of sound. — JAMES GREBEY

SPIN Singles Mix: Chrome Sparks, Blood and Glass, GoldLink, and More

Florist, “Vacation” (Double Double Whammy)
It can be easy to romanticize the relative ease of childhood when you don’t yet know what form your adult life will take. Brooklyn indie-folk gents Florist face their own quarter-life quandary on “Vacation,” which the first single from their forthcoming EP, Holdly (out on October 30). “I don’t know how to be / What I wanted to be when I was five,” they pontificate over light acoustic picks and kickdrums before waxing nostalgic about “snow hikes and Christmas lights,” “roller-coasters with my dad,” and “when a swimming pool in a hotel was a gift from God.” They may have a point on that last one. — RACHEL BRODSKY

SPIN Singles Mix: Chrome Sparks, Blood and Glass, GoldLink, and More

Gag, “Pretty Boy” (Iron Lung)
Gag titled their forthcoming compilation America’s Greatest Hits, and they’ve festooned previous releases with studded bananas and creepy clowns. So despite the fact that they’re a hardcore band, it’s clear that they’re willing to smirk on occasion. That lineage is evident in the gentle uplift of the wonky guitar lines and chattering feedback on new single “Pretty Boy,” but the fuzzed-out two minutes still feels serious as death. Laughing or not, when you’re dead, you’re f—king dead. — COLIN JOYCE

SPIN Singles Mix: Chrome Sparks, Blood and Glass, GoldLink, and More

GoldLink, “Spectrum” (Soulection)
After kicking down the door last year with his mixtape The God Complex, D.C. rapper D’Anthony Carlos, also known as GoldLink, collaborates with Louie Lastic on this brisk new single. Set to appear on his forthcoming album, After That, We Didn’t Talk (out on November 13), “Spectrum” serves as an acerbic commentary regarding a failed relationship (“So if you ever try to blame it on me / Know I blame it on nmy dick”), weaving snippets of Tagalog monologue and samples from Missy Elliott’s “She’s a Bitch” over a round of loaded bass. — MEILYN HUQ

SPIN Singles Mix: Chrome Sparks, Blood and Glass, GoldLink, and More

Hype Williams, “Distance” (Self-Released)
Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland have carried over the broken-pop predilections of their days in Hype Williams into new efforts under their own name, but this week they reanimated the project — which had lain dormant since they announced their breakup in 2013 — for a one-off called “Distance.” Its plucked strings and disembodied synth lines are unsettling and otherworldly and immediately endearing, a mostly positive dreamscape you find yourself trying to escape anyway. Still, when you wake up everything’s just the same. Based on their recent pattern of working, count on this being the last ghostly glimpse of the duo for a while. — C.J.

SPIN Singles Mix: Chrome Sparks, Blood and Glass, GoldLink, and More

My Morning Jacket, “Compound Fracture (Giorgio Moroder remix)” (Capitol/ATO Records)
Kentucky rock collective My Morning Jacket released their seventh studio album, The Waterfall, in May, but this week Italian DJ Giorgio Moroder is breathing new disco life into their track “Compound Fracture.” Stripping away the guitars, Moroder makes room for gobs of sleek synths. Jim James’s soaring vocals are still front and center, but Moroder moves the song swiftly along, molding the languid indie-rock jam into a dance-floor killer. — NATHAN DILLER

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SPIN Singles Mix: Chrome Sparks, Blood and Glass, GoldLink, and More

Rich the Kid and iLoveMakonnen, “Workin It” (Self-Released)
Much like Future and Drake’s What A Time To Be Alive coming together in six days (so legend tells it), reportedly this new track from iLoveMakonnen and Rich the Kid’s upcoming collaborative mixtape, Whip It Up, was thrown together over a single weekend. But it doesn’t show: Polished and howling, Makonnen digs into his gritty, cracked tones, blending syllables together as Rich the Kid slices through the sheen with his gurgled rhymes. It’s way prettier than it has to be, but damn if it doesn’t bang. — BRENNAN CARLEY

SPIN Singles Mix: Chrome Sparks, Blood and Glass, GoldLink, and More

Summer Flake, “Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind” (Rice Is Nice)
Australia guitar-pop songstress Summer Flake does Mick Jagger and Keith Richards proud in this smoothed-over cover of their psychedelic 1965-written jam. Featured on her new EP, Time Rolls By, “Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind” used to be accompanied by a parade of literal bells and whistles, but Flake slows the pace down to emulate a lazy, twangy rhythm, places her distorted chords front-and-center, and layers her easy vocals to create a lush, summer-into-fall anthem. — R.B.