BEST CHILL SONGS - WEEK 4

1/24/20

While winter can be a dark, difficult few months for many of us, it can also be a time for embracing all of our favorite cozy, comforting pleasures. From snuggling up in a blanket burrito, to staying in all weekend to binge on Friends, winter is a chance to really treat ourselves to some A-grade self-care. Of course, there's no harm in listening to a handful of warm musical fuzzies along the way, which leads me on to today's edition of We Are: The Guard's Best Chill Songs.

Just grab a cup of coffee and indulge in the following chill vibes from Four Tet, Jai Wolf, Lolo Zouaï, and more.

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FOUR TET – BABY

Coinciding with the announcement of Sixteen Oceans, Four Tet has shared “Baby.” It's a bubbly piece of dance-floor effervescence that features none other than Ellie Goulding, with Four Tet chopping and screwing her vocals in the club-centric cut, which eventually slips into a serene, tranquil lull replete with birdsong and the sound of gently running water.

 

JAI WOLF (FEAT. WRABEL) – MOON RIDER

Following on from the release of The Cure to Loneliness, indie-electronic producer Jai Wolf returns with the ascendant “Moon Rider.” The three-and-a-half-minute cut certainly lives up to its title in that it sounds like it's coming for the outer reaches of the universe, with Jai buckling us into his rocketship of dreams as copiloted by the celestial feature artist Wrabel.

 

LOLO ZOUAÏ – DESERT ROSE

Lolo Zouaï touches on the diaspora experience on the beguiling “Desert Rose.” The song finds Lolo – who was born to an Algerian father and a French mother and raised in San Francisco – grappling with her identity as she returns to her dad's native soil, with the 24-year-old rendering this venture into the unknown in mesmerizingly potent, emotional detail.

 

070 SHAKE – ROCKETSHIP

070 Shake has been enjoying a meteoric rise of late, and she's not about to let anyone get in the way of her journey to superstardom on “Rocketship.” “It feel like I'm on a rocketship, rocketship/And ain't nobody stoppin' this rocketship,” sings Shake on the Modus Vivendi cut, which sounds as if it's coming from the very same astroworld as a certain Travis Scott.

 

JHENÉ AIKO – P*$$Y FAIRY (OTW)

Ladies listening to this song on repeat while waiting for their men to get home:

 

MONSUNE – OUTTA MY MIND

Monsune continues to hone his intoxicatingly soulful sound on “OUTTA MY MIND.” “[It's] a heavily Prince-influenced song about obsessive infatuation,” writes the Canadian musician of the cut – a delicious plunderphonic groove that samples War's “Lotus Blossom” and Donny Hathaway's “Love, Love, Love” and is mixed by Frank Ocean confederate Jeff Ellis.

 

ELLIOT MOSS – BODYINTOSHAPES

Love is sacrificial by nature, but Elliot Moss questions whether things have gone too far on “Bodyintoshapes.” “[It] speaks about bending to someone's needs; agreeing to change for them. Doing everything to preserve love, even if it means sacrificing what makes you happy,” he writes of the song – a contorting, shifting trance as lifted from A Change In Diet.

 

MAYE – TÚ

Introducing maye, the Venezuelan-born, Miami-raised songstress who's here to sweep us off our feet with the wistful “Tú.” It's a bilingual bossa-nova dream that sounds like it came straight out of a Spanish-language rom-com set in the searing heat of summer, with everything moving in slow-motion as maye serenades and caresses us with her soft voice.

 

BAYNK (FEAT. GOLDEN VESSEL & AKUREI) – DOWN

BAYNK, Golden Vessel, and Akurei come together for the effortless “DOWN.” Opening to the relentless pulse of what sounds like an engaged phone line, “DOWN” eventually unfurls into a deftly crafted, infectious percussive bop that never once sounds busy or overcrowded, with BANYK finishing the whole thing off with his cool, collected vocal chops.

 

JORDANN – BUSINESS SOLUTIONS

Canada's Jordan Hebert, also known as JORDANN, is inviting us into his dreamily groovy world on “Business Solutions.” With a funky bassline backing an ethereal array of synths, “Business Solutions” is an ode to the struggle of professional relationships (“Woes of talk shove it in/Throes of doubt still it in”) that comes completed by Jordan's otherworldly voice.

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Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

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Jess Grant is a frustrated writer hailing from London, England. When she isn't tasked with disentangling her thoughts from her brain and putting them on paper, Jess can generally be found listening to The Beatles, or cooking vegetarian food.