Beat the Summer Heat With These Texas Tunes

Here are a few songs to distract you from the heat.

By Leah ScarpelliAugust 9, 2016 9:45 am

While it’s easy to get pumped up for the summer season, in Texas it can be a bit tough to get through it. We have endless days of triple-digit temperatures, high electricity bills for all that air conditioning, and so many melted popsicles.

To help keep us cool when we can’t get to the pool, we asked Matt Reilly with KUTX in Austin, and Amy Miller with KXT in Dallas, to choose a song that embodies a particular time of a Texas summer day.

Amy’s summer morning: “Exit Polls” by Dallas artist Nicholas Altobelli

“It’s very upbeat-sounding, but I also chose it because of the relevance to what’s going on right now. It’s called Exit Polls and it’s actually about the election. … It’s about folks who are so emotionally invested in a candidate they can’t see the reality of the poll numbers.”

Matt’s summer evening: “3.2 Beer of Love” from Austin band Li’l Cap’n Travis

“The song is about a breakup. … What evokes a summer night to me is the honky tonk swagger of it. It makes you just want to get into a little beer joint and just start going to town on whatever they’re offering.”

If you’ve got your own summer song picks, tweet us @texasstandard or send them to texasstandard@kut.org.