Last week, Mister Disco pinged me from his Verizon Wireless 4GLTE smartphone, bummed that he’d just heard one of our favorite tracks from last year, the Moullinex remix of “Cairo” by Kamp!, underneath a Guess jeans ad. Sure, it fit the vibe of lithe bodies posturing in streamlined denim, but we both felt we’d lost a little something. Maybe it was our inner-teenagers still clinging to the ragged notion that we’re defined more by the music we like than the products we own, or maybe we just knew if we ever dropped the tune in a DJ set again, someone would inevitably come up and ask if it was that song from the Guess commercial.  Of course, this isn’t anything to get pouty about, it’s just how musicians pay the rent these days, and if someone offered me cash to tie my name to the Macbook Pro I flipped open to type this piece, I’d discreetly wipe the drool from my chin and immediately sign on the dotted line.

Anyway, I came across a great song by up-and-coming Brooklyn band Xylos this week. Their new single “Summerlong” is sweet slice of electropop, tinged with a bit of melancholy on top, seeming to opine for a time that’s past (“We could make it like we did all summerlong”), and probably won’t be coming back. There’s not much on their website or Facebook page in the way of background or bio info, though contact emails are provided for their legal representation at Carroll, Guido & Groffman, LLP, as well as syncing and licensing via Universal Music Publishing Group, which makes me think we’ll be hearing this song in an ad for AmEx or Vitaminwater soon enough. And that’s fine by me. The band gets paid, and I get to hit the sidewalks this summer in my Puma TT Supers, cranking the Koss KSC75s every time this jam shuffles up on my iPhone 3GS (gotta upgrade soon), waiting for that chant-a-long chorus of outstretched “Whoa-ohs” to grab me by the ears and carry me off smiling and shining, claiming the syncing rights to “Summerlong” as the soundtrack to my own blissed-out afternoon.

– Spoolwork