The ultimate playlist of hot new musical talent, to complement the warmer weather.

Whether you’re in a car packed with mates en route to a festival, at your boss’s garden drinks party, or in a late-night Uber home with a Tinder date, summer is a great time to impress your acquaintances with your impeccable taste in music. So you shouldn’t ever get caught out with a weak playlist. What’s that? You don't have time to dig through the best new releases? Don’t stress, we’ve got you covered. Every possible mood and scenario is catered for on MR PORTER’s summer playlist, which collects all the tracks that, in our humble opinion, are destined to become the ever-highly-contested “sounds of the summer” this year. What’s more, we’ve picked out five artists from the selection that everyone is going to be talking about so, when those all-important first impressions get made at this summer’s flings, dos and assorted dinner parties, you can really look like you know your stuff, music-wise. So read up, listen and put something fizzy on ice – these tracks should help you get into the swing of things.

Four years after winning the BBC Sound Of… poll, Mr Michael Kiwanuka is back with a folk-tinged soul album that firmly establishes him as one of our generation’s leading songwriters. While the influences from Messrs Bill Withers and Curtis Mayfield are still proudly on display, songs like “One More Night” and “Love & Hate” hint at grander musical ambitions. With production from studio wizard Danger Mouse, Mr Kiwanuka’s stripped-back sound has been bumped up with lush string orchestration and afrobeat rhythms that will appeal to fans of Messrs Otis Redding, Fela Kuti and The Black Keys. A perfect narrator for these long summer nights.

We’re pretty sure that Mr Francis Farewell Starlite (do you reckon that’s his real name?) was trying to do a cover of “Hungry Eyes” from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack when he created this. Either that or a remix of Mr Bobby Brown’s “Rock Wit’cha”. However he stumbled upon it, there’s no denying that he and Bon Iver have written a huge summer hit with “Friends”. Mr Kanye West loved it so much that he made a cameo in the video and publicly declared on Twitter that it’s his favourite song of the year. Against our better judgment, we’ve ended up loving it too. We also regularly re-enact Mr Starlite’s dance moves from the video – give it a go yourself in the park this weekend.

Taken off Ms Jessy Lanza’s magnificent album Oh No, which was released back in May on Hyperdub, “VV Violence” is a song about the breakdown of a relationship. But rather than indulge in a moping ballad about lost love, the Canadian singer chooses to up the tempo and sing about her disappointing boyfriend over an electro-funk stroller which somehow morphs into a banging techno workout. If only all break-ups sounded as fun as this.

The freeform R&B artist has already made a splash this summer with his song “Janet” – a track that namechecks Aunt Viv from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air – but it’s this downtempo woozy anthem that we’ll be rewinding when the sun comes out.

We all know that sinking feeling of getting down to the last sip of a drink and having to hoist oneself off the sun lounger to make the long slog back to the fridge. On the scale of summer inconveniences it’s up there with inflating a giant paddling pool by mouth and cooking tofu on a barbecue (or does that only happen to us?). None of this probably inspired Mr Jamie Isaac to make this beguiling, bass-heavy track, but we’re sure that his brooding, cinematic and minimalist approach will quench your musical thirst as the days get hotter. They’re gonna get hotter, right?