15 Songs For Your Washington, D.C. Summer

By Ally Schweitzer and Rodney Davis

pool

This playlist has been updated to include Visto’s oh-so-summery, brand-new single “Smoke It Down.” We just couldn’t not. —Editor 

Yes, summer is fading fast. But that doesn’t mean the vibe has to fade with it.

The D.C. area’s hip-hop and R&B scenes tend to heat up in the warmer months. This year, they haven’t disappointed. And while not all summer-ready songs interpret “summer” the same way, a general rule is that they don’t make us work too hard.

The songs in Bandwidth’s seasonal rotation have leaned toward the languid — from the syrupy and entracing to the classic, soul-steeped stuff — and they’re all fine for head-nodding, solo walking or bleary-eyed partying.

So a few Bandwidth contributors put their heads together to come up with a playlist of the most summer-ready songs out of the D.C. region this year. We limited it to tracks released in 2015, but not necessarily the summer; and we focused on hip-hop and R&B, but we weren’t draconian about style (you could argue Kali Uchis’ “Rush,” for example, is more pop than hip-hop or R&B).

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to local talent, here is your chance to catch up. For those of you who have, see if your summer playlists match up with ours. And as usual, let us know what we missed in the comments or on Twitter.

Check out Bandwidth’s other recent playlists, including our favorite D.C. songs of 2015 so far.

Warning: Explicit lyrics.

Image by Flickr user Simon Thomas used under a Creative Commons license.