Endless Summer: 28 Songs To Keep The Heat In Your Heart

We close out the second season of Roséwave, the ultimate summer playlist series, with our friend Sam Sanders, host of It's Been a Minute. —Lars Gotrich

I do that thing a lot where a song comes on and then I go somewhere else. Frank Ocean makes me think of getting lost in the city at night on purpose and buying something at the too-expensive ice cream shop only because they were playing Blonde. Nick Hakim takes me back to that spontaneous trip to the desert when it was entirely too hot to go, but the 405 was super easy get through leaving L.A., so look on the bright side right? D'Angelo is the rooftop birthday party we snuck onto just before sunset. Empire of the Sun is the bouncer who miraculously let us in to that club we were much too old to enter. Lorde is the end of that sloppy, decadent summer fling – an ending that wasn't painful at all – just before I dropped you off at the wrong airport.

My roséwave is pure nostalgia. A hazy flashback triggered by song. A reminder that summer is forever if you want it. That you can always live there, in your mind. And maybe you always should. In that spirit, the first 12 songs of my official NPR Music roséwave playlist are songs that take me back – to summer moments I never want to forget. These songs tug on my soul strings in just the right way, that way that makes you smile just hard enough to trigger that single silent tear of content reflection.

Of course, if summer is forever, it means I am always ready for a summer party as well. That's why the second portion of my list contains songs to get the party going, mostly songs I've used in summer festivities in the past, with a few newer cuts I hope to play at summer ragers in the future.

Happy roséwave. Here's to making your summer a permanent state of mind.

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