It was 82 degrees where I live on the day I wrote this, but the forecast is for highs in the 40s by the end of this week. Summer of 2011 is definitely a thing of the past in the northern hemisphere – the trees are shedding their leaves and the temperatures are preparing to embark on their inevitable march downwards. Snow flurries are just around the corner, at a distance now measured in weeks rather than months.

So perhaps we come to “Summer Jam” by New York City’s Cookies a little late in the year to know quite how it would have played in its titular season. Instead, now it simply conjures nostalgia for a season recently ended, whose sunny days and warm nights are now merely memories to recall as colder weather moves in on the northern half of the globe.

However, it’s entirely likely that mood of melancholy nostalgia is the same mood “Summer Jam” would’ve evoked even hearing it in July. It doesn’t seem to aim to be the soundtrack of any current summer, but instead is stitched together from pieces of summers past – a little early 1970s Philly soul, some early ‘80s hip-hop beats, and some mid-’90s Beck-style sonic collage. “Summer Jam” doesn’t feel so much like the summer of 2011 as it does every summer in the unreachable past.

The vocals on “Summer Jam” are courtesy of former Mobius Band member Ben Sterling and Melissa Metrick, and their harmonies on lines like “You’re the most beautiful thing / That I’ve ever seen” speak to the heady emotions of summer love, while the retro-’70s instrumental touches ground the whole thing in a vintage past, like looking at snapshots from the beach. Like those snapshots, “Summer Jam” reminds us that while summer is a fleeting moment each year, even as the leaves begin to fall it will still be there in memory.

If you liked this song, you should also check out:

Unicycle Loves You “Mirror, Mirror”

Summer Cats “Hey You”

Magic Kids “Summer”

Edmonton’s Doug Hoyer first came to attention in his native Canada back in 2004 as a cast member on the CBC reality show Rock Camp – a spin on School of Rock that followed musically inclined teenagers in their efforts to form bands at the titular camp. Since then, he’s been releasing a steady stream of product that usually somehow manages to bring a synth-pop spin to the odd wave of ukulele music that’s been all the rage of late.

Hoyer left the ukulele in its case for “Northern Lights,” a track from his new album Walks With the Tender and Growing Night. Instead, Hoyer unspools a straight up dance track that sounds like a lot like the sorts of bands that popped up in the mid-1980s who desperately wanted to be New Wave whether or not New Wave wanted them – bands like Animotion, the Eurogliders and Re-Flex. It’s a perky piece of ear candy with a synthesizer hook so indelible that resistance is futile no matter how much the listener might try to fight it.

“Northern Lights” most resembles what The Magnetic Fields might have sounded like if Stephin Merritt had ever chosen to take the synth-pop tendencies of his early work into full-on dance territory. It’s not hard to imagine Merritt penning a chorus like “You can dig for silver and gold / But you can’t mine the northern lights / And you can chase the sun all day / But the moon still brings the night,” especially when Hoyer delivers them in a baritone that might fool Merritt’s own mother into thinking it’s her boy singing them.

I have no idea how Rock Camp played out and if Hoyer’s combo ended up winning any sort of competition it might have included (heck, for all I know he may have been a counselor and not a camper). Based on “Northern Lights,” though, it’s safe to say he was paying attention when they were teaching how to write and record catchy pop songs.

Click here to listen to Walks With the Tender and Growing Night on Spotify.

If you liked this song, you should also check out:

Cookies “Summer Jam”

Chromeo “Night by Night”

Shit Robot “Take ‘Em Up (featuring Nancy Whang)”

It’s not just superheroes who require secret identities. Sometimes musicians stepping out from their day jobs feel the need to create a separate persona, just to underline the fact that they’re doing something a bit different from their usual work. For as much as music fans want their favorite artists to experiment a bit, they also want them to not stray too far afield – recall Neil Young’s “lost decade” back in the 1980s, when he decided he might like to sound like Kraftwerk or Merle Haggard for a change instead of Neil Young. Perhaps he might’ve saved himself a bit of grief at the time if he’d crafted an alias for himself.

Hugo Manuel, frontman of the (previously spotlighted) Oxford combo Jonquil, is nowhere near the household name that Neil Young is, of course, but it’s still understandable why he would feel the need to craft a separate persona when he steps away from his band and does solo work. Where Jonquil’s style might best be described as a slightly off-kilter mix of Killers-style alterna-pop mixed with Atlas Sound atmospherics, Chad Valley traffics in a British take on the chillwave sound.

“Fast Challenges” is awash (one might even say “Washed Out”) with swathes of smoothly percolating synthesizers and soaring, swooning vocals. Chillwave is a style that’s got contradictions built into its core – it’s a sound that’s highly danceable without giving the impression that it’s asking anyone to put themselves out too much by dancing, and “Fast Challenges” nails the vibe. It’s one of the most relaxing but very energetic songs one is likely to hear, conjuring up the feeling of sunrise after an all night rave or lounging in bed with a lover in the afterglow of sex. (Or for the more pure-minded, heavenly hosts of angels who are too hip for harps.)

Chad Valley may be Hugo Manuel’s nom de plume when he’s working away from his main band, but he performs at a high enough level to make the idea of him adopting it as his main identity very appealing.

Chad Valley’s seven-song Equatorial Ultravox EP was released on June 21st by Cascine.

If you liked this song, you should also check out:

Plant Plants “She’s No One”

Johan Agebjörn “Watch the World Go By (with Le Prix and Lake Heartbeat)”

For those clued into the world of contemporary indie dance music it should come as no surprise to learn that today’s featured act, Strange Talk, hails from Australia. The scene there has already provided us with one of the genre’s biggest breakout successes in Cut Copy, as well as a formidable cohort that includes Midnight Juggernauts, The Presets, and Van She. Strange Talk are looking to be counted among that flock with the recent release of their debut Strange Talk EP on the influential Neon Gold label (Passion Pit, DOM, Ellie Goulding, The Sound of Arrows).

“Climbing Walls” is the first of self-titled release’s four songs and feels as though it were genetically engineered to make the kids put down their PBRs and shakeit. With a fluttering, high-energy pulse that rightfully earns those Cut Copy comparisons, “Climbing Walls” features cascades of synthesizer melodies and the deep thumps of digitized drums.

One of the song’s most engaging moments, however, is when Strange Talk loosens things up during the track’s bridge. During these moments listeners can hear that perennial Big Influence–New Order–insinuating itself into the composition in the form of a guitar riff that couples perfectly with its counterpart on bass. Strange Talk doesn’t linger here too long, careful to not let the momentum slip away, and the throttle is promptly pushed all the way up again.

If you liked this song, you should also check out:

Girl Talk “Triple Double”

The Fresh & Onlys “Waterfall”

Gardens & Villa “Star Fire Power”