SINGLE PREMIERE: Cookie Baker - The Summer (Ft. Tim Rogers)

Melbourne alternative-folk-pop singer-songwriter Cookie Baker has just released new single The Summer, featuring Oz icon Tim Rogers, and The Music is stoked to celebrate its arrival with its premiere airing today.

The gentle, sublime tune explores themes of "unexpected longing, confusion, despondency and the emotional debris that follows", and showcases Baker's honeyed vocals atop understated acoustic guitar and barely-there percussion before Rogers' distinct tones enter in dulcet tandem midway through. The pair's voices dance around each other, heightening the song's organic emotion, the soundscape blossoming in a flourish of harmonies and purposeful instrumental passages through to its fade-out conclusion.

The tune is the first taste of Baker's work with Michael Carpenter, of Sydney's Love Hz Studios, a collaboration that has endured to help the ascendant troubadour craft her upcoming debut full-length, while Rogers' vocals were laid down with the assistance of You Am I's Davey Lane.

"This song is something different," Carpenter muses of the track. "It still engages me immediately, and, as a listener, gets a reaction out of me every single time.

"With the introduction of Tim’s vocal, the dialogue engages a deeper story, and then you’re too far in to withdraw from it. But, when those backing vocals arrive, the emotion of it all is too much. If you listen, really listen, there’s a whole lifetime — several and many, in fact — in this song."

The Summer (ft. Tim Rogers) is available now via Spotify and iTunes.

To connect with Cookie Baker and find out more about her upcoming movements — her next show is at Gin Lane, in Belgrave, on Saturday 27 May — and releases, see her website.