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Music

PREMIERE: Young Summer's "Alright" Is a Swoon Tune for the Unrequited

It's been two years since the Washington DC artist's last piece of music but this is worth the wait.

Reacquaint yourself with Young Summer, a Washington DC-based artist who, back in 2014, dropped a bunch of songs like "Waves That Rolled Under You" and "Taken" that took flight thanks to deftly assembled synth-pop hooks and Summer's vocals—smooth like cashmere on naked skin and cracking with emotion in all the appropriate places. These songs were lifted off her debut LP Siren, and since then she's been busy doing what songwriters do: writing songs.

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Below is the grand unveiling of her new tune "Alright"—her first since 2014. Lifted from her forthcoming EP (due to drop sometime this summer), "Alright" is a lilting, lush pop song. Full of undulating synths, like the wind flipping up a full skirt on a breezy day. A little modern Fleetwood Mac, a lot of longing distilled into three and a bit minutes.

"'Alright" is about unrequited love, loving someone but being unable to confess it," she explains. "It’s the trepidation we all have when we don’t want to get hurt but we can’t help but feel the way we do for someone. One of my favorite moments in the song is the line, 'Am I allowed to love you?' because so often I've felt that way. In that line there is the long awaited relief of a confession.

"'Alright' is a song that articulates fear and insecurity but maintains a protective armor sonically with its confident, glossy production. I love to juxtapose the meaning of a song with its sonic identity. An extremely personal song about fear and insecurity with upbeat, sparkling production is like sneaking vegetables into the listeners’ dessert and also a way for me to distract while I confess."