Tame Impala Essentials

“I like to think I’ve never really had much of an idea what I’m doing,” Kevin Parker told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in 2020. “That’s part of the essence of it: not really knowing what you’re doing.” You can hear that refreshing naïveté—and an outsider’s knack for left-field choices—in everything that the Australian wunderkind has released as Tame Impala. Observe how the groggy phaser effect and retro psych crunch of early gems like 2010’s “Solitude Is Bliss” give way to the warped sheen and crumbling drums of 2012’s “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards”, as if Tame Impala is a private sandpit in which Parker can build elaborate castles and then dash them when it’s time for something new. After graduating to the mainstream with his 2015 opus Currents—and scoring a proper global hit with the falsetto synth-funk of “The Less I Know the Better”—Parker managed to make Thriller-esque flourishes feel intimate and personal on 2019’s “Borderline”. And after years of absorbing the circular mechanics of dance music, he framed his 2025 single “End of Summer” as an affectionate tribute to house, from its beat-forward groove and extended runtime to its white-label artwork.