“I think we’ll need music extra bad as we traverse further into times of environmental and economic distress,” Holly Rankin (Jack River) tells Apple Music. That growing need was firmly in her mind while working on her second album, Endless Summer. Centered on songs written just before Rankin discovered that she was pregnant, the finished record balances feel-good themes of dreamy escape with the foreboding portent of climate change. “I hope we will have the will to know when we need to tune in and when we need to tune out,” says Rankin. “It’s this line between reality and escapism that I like to sit in the middle of.” This playlist, comprising songs that inspired her album, aims to capture her “dream-fueled drive to make musical worlds in the first place.” That means exultant time capsules from The Beatles, Elton John, and Joni Mitchell sitting comfortably alongside newer sonic postcards from Animal Collective, Khruangbin, and Air. “Each song transports you completely somewhere else,” she says. “That is a song’s job: to take you somewhere you can’t go alone, to walk with you like a best friend into rooms you’ve left untouched, dreams you’re scared to dream, to the calm you can’t know on your own.” Read on for more on key tracks in the playlist. The Beach Boys, “Surf’s Up” “One of my favorite songs. The way this song paints a cinematic world in your mind is so magnificent. If there is a song that encompasses an endless summer torn between escapism and real emotion, this is it.” T. Rex, “Children of the Revolution” “I love the star-spangled world of Marc Bolan. He dances in the space of David Bowie. We need these heroes of the eternal dream to keep us knowing that the impossible and the magical are tangible. I reckon we will need this superpower during the hot and heartbreaking years to come.” All Saints, “Pure Shores” “How and why do these sounds evoke pure and unbound youth, set against the most perfect and stress-free early-2000s summer? This song holds the keys to so many people’s youths. I am fascinated by production and melodies that do this.” Marvin Gaye, “Got to Give It Up (Pt. 1)” “Marvin Gaye has made us a purple velvet ’70s room to live out our 2 am dreams. Matt Corby and I listened to this a lot whilst making the song ‘Honey.’ Just. So. Good.” Primal Scream, “Loaded” “During the making of Endless Summer I learned of Primal Scream (latecomer but whatever). When we were making [album opener] ‘Real Life’ we leant hard into these sounds and the energy of it all. It was almost too much fun. If there was an endless summer, these guys would be playing on the beach.”