Summer has arrived and visions of bathing suits, water fights and popsicles have started to dance through the heads of Calgarians. In honour of the impending season, Radio Silence takes a look at some of the best summer jams the Internet has to offer.

Passion of the Weiss – Summer Jamz 09 (passionweiss.com/category/summer-jamz/)

Maintained by Jeff Weiss, a current contributor to LA Weekly and former writer for the dearly missed Stylus Magazine, Passion of the Weiss is home to some of the best music writing on the web. Weiss predominantly deals with hip hop and his ear for the genre is undeniable, but he also covers other types of music as he sees fit. Recently, with the help of some of his equally well-listened friends, he’s been running a series of mixes designed specifically for summer chilling. Unsurprisingly, most of the mixes lean fairly heavily on golden age hip hop and deep soul cuts, but they’re no worse for it.

Of course, the sunshine and skin that pops during summer can be torture if you’re not in a good mood. Fortunately for the gloomy at heart, one of the mixes featured is “Summer Pain” (passionweiss.com/2009/06/09/summer-jamz-09-nick-southall-ian-mathers-risottoberg/), which was compiled by Nick Southall and Ian Mathers and features downers by the likes of Spiritualized, Morphine, Mogwai and Low to keep all those positive vibes good and shuttered.

Soul Sides Summer Songs (soulsummer.blogspot.com/)

Similarly to Weiss’s Summer Jamz project, the good people at soul-sides.com have gotten their Soul Sides Summer Songs blog up and running for another year. The blog will run throughout the season and features individual songs, mixes and essays posted by various people who know what they’re talking about. The 2009 edition of the blog is still in its infancy, but already features a dizzying array of music from around the world with the common uniting theme that all of it makes you want to blow off work and sit by a pool sipping on something iced. Bookmark it.

Jens Lekman – The Summer Never Ends (www.jenslekman.com/records/THESUMMERNEVERENDS.mp3)

Jens Lekman’s 2007 album Night Falls Over Kortedala is pretty much everything one could want from patio music — blaring horns, vocal samples from dusty soul songs, hip-hop beats and Lekman’s hopelessly romantic, unabashedly twee vocals — so few things feel more right than the Swedish singer-songwriter dropping a mix of summer songs in what he calls “two-thousand-and-fine.”

Lekman wisely uses songs that wouldn’t sound out of place popping up as knee-buckling sampled hooks on his next record, while also pulling back the curtain to reveal where some of the sounds on Kortedala came from. This, along with him dropping vocals here and there, makes “The Summer Never Ends” more personal than the usual mix, but first and foremost, it’s a lot of fun.

Raekwon – Blood on the Chef’s Apron (megaupload.com/?d=E7OXMFTA)

Finally, it wouldn’t be Radio Silence without a mixtape, so here’s the latest from Wu-Tang legend Raekwon, whose Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II will come out someday and make this writer very happy.