How chillwave’s brief moment in the sun cast a long shadow over the 2010s [2019] • Pitchfork
In the middle of 2009, indie culture was awash in The Summer of Chill, as several homebound young artists from across the American South stared down an economic void by creating electronic pop songs that came to define what we now know as chillwave.
There was the synth-smeared “Feel It All Around” by rural Georgia bedroom act Washed Out, the melted-ice-cream-cone swoon of Texas psych-fabulist Neon Indian’s “Deadbeat Summer,” and South Carolina polymath Toro y Moi’s “Blessa,” a totem of high-temperature contentment that turned pop inside-out. All three songs shared fuzzy production values, partially obscured vocals, and increased emphasis on loops, the end product sounding like a decayed transmission broadcast through a busted television set.