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| | For subscribers | August 12, 2025 | | 
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8 songs for the dog days of summer
8 songs, 26 min 42 sec
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| Lorde Scott a Garfitt/Invision, via Associated Press |
Dear listeners,
This is Dani Blum, a health reporter and sometimes music writer at The New York Times, back again while Lindsay is out.
A few weeks ago, Reggie Ugwu brought us songs for Lizard Season, the heat of peak summer. Now we're smack in the middle of sticky, sludgy August, where the thought of the season soon ending feels like both a gift and a threat. This week marks the tail end of the dog days of summer, but a humid, hazy head space usually lingers as we move into its last stretch.
To help get through it, I've pulled together a playlist with some of my favorite dog-related tracks. I just returned from my favorite place to spend a summer, Copenhagen, so this playlist has a slight Scandinavian bent — there's drifty, synth-smeared pop from the Danish singer Erika de Casier and a relatively deep cut from the Swedish rapper Yung Lean. I've also included some beloved indie heavyweights, like boygenius, Mitski and Soccer Mommy.
Every dog has its day,
Dani
1. FKA twigs: "24hr Dog"
This is an understated, underrated track from "Eusexua," FKA twigs's album-length ode to the club, which came out earlier this year. The song quietly builds as she toys with ideas about shame and submission, drums twitching as she admits, "I'm a dog for you."
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Mitski: "I Bet on Losing Dogs"
Few people can twist a word again and again like Mitski, who repeats "baby" seven times in this song's first 30 seconds. Each time, she soaks it in a new meaning; call it 50 shades of dread. When she crashes into the chorus, she describes a series of doomed relationships as dogs condemned to race and fail, again and again. "I know they're losing," she howls, "and I pay for my place."
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Soccer Mommy: "Your Dog"
Sophie Allison, the songwriter who calls herself Soccer Mommy, wastes no time making her anger plain and palpable on this track from "Clean." She refuses to play the role of "little pet at the edge of every bed you sleep in," outlining all the ways an ex has made her feel small. It's a sharp rebuke that sneaks up on you.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Erika de Casier: "Puppy Love"
Here's a track as gripping and intoxicating as the first minutes of flirting, a self-aware song that luxuriates in infatuation. You can practically hear the giggle behind each of de Casier's giddy questions — "What's your favorite color? And are you a Gemini?" — capturing that fizzy feeling of getting to know someone.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Lorde: "Big Star"
I'll go to the mat arguing that Lorde has released the best album of the year so far. When she's on, she's on, and in "Big Star," a track from her 2021 album "Solar Power," she focuses on the death of her beloved dog, Pearl, with wrenching, tender specificity. "I'm a cheater, I lie and I'm shy / But you like to say hello to total strangers," she coos. I've never heard anyone capture the grief of losing a pet quite like this.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. boygenius: "Me & My Dog"
"I wanna be emaciated," the women of boygenius wail, with the force of a door slamming shut. "I wanna hear one song without thinking of you." There's getting away from a bad breakup and then there's the boygenius approach: longing to shoot yourself into space, in the calm and still dark, alone except for the dog beside you.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Yung Lean: "Dogboy"
The Swedish rapper Yung Lean delights in chaos. On "Dogboy," he's plunking along the playground while the world crumples around him, chasing the smell of death and steadily letting go of his grip on reality. Each verse disintegrates further as he fears he's losing his mind: "Dogs in my yard and my friends are gone, gone, gone," he chants, sounding distant and numb.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Taylor Swift: "The Black Dog"
Beware the all-mighty "Find My Friends." "The Black Dog," perhaps the best song from Taylor Swift's sprawling "The Tortured Poets Department," crystallizes every petty impulse that rises after a breakup; she doesn't just track an ex's location, she hopes he's having a horrible time. It's biting and honest and good cathartic fun, a song that demands you scream along.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
"8 Songs for the Dog Days of Summer" track list
Track 1: FKA twigs, "24hr Dog"
Track 2: Mitski, "I Bet on Losing Dogs"
Track 3: Soccer Mommy, "Your Dog"
Track 4: Erika de Casier, "Puppy Love"
Track 5: Lorde, "Big Star"
Track 6: boygenius, "Me & My Dog"
Track 7: Yung Lean, "Dogboy"
Track 8: Taylor Swift, "The Black Dog"
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Have feedback? Ideas for a playlist? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at theamplifier@nytimes.com.
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