When Róisín Murphy turned up on DJ Koze’s 2018 album Knock Knock, the Irish singer’s grainy, muted vocal textures turned out to be the perfect foil for Koze’s oddball funk—smoothing over the crags, tempering the tone colors. Last month, the two musicians reunited on a vinyl-only single, “Can’t Replicate,” stretching Murphy’s breathy purr over a taut deep-house groove; now they shift into downbeat disco with the cozier “CooCool.” Koze has always seemed happiest when he’s being squirrely, and he tweaks tiny details—tin-can horn charts, a filigree of jazz guitar, what might be a cicada humming to itself—over a bed of warmly nostalgic ’60s soul until the laid-back track practically vibrates with antic energy. Whereas Murphy was steely and commanding on “Can’t Replicate,” adopting an ice queen’s poise, here she gives way to her most starry-eyed instincts: “That ol’ magic’s back/A warm feeling flooding/A new age of love/An incandescent joy.” At the chorus she slips into nonsense, rapturously proclaiming: “I hear a coo coo/I hear a cooing/Sweet lover coo coo.” It’s a song about the birds and the bees that asks, What if it could be springtime all the time? Or as Murphy herself puts it: “Let it be silly season, darlin’/All year round.”
