Echoes Through the Groove: Hot Chip’s Greatest Hits Reframed

A two-decade pulse coalesced into one album—and then a single note appears, unannounced, demanding we ask: what does devotion sound like?

Hot Chip’s career, spread across eight LPs from their raw debut Coming on Strong to the sleek hooks of A Bath Full of Ecstasy, now takes form in Joy in Repetition, out September 5 via Domino. Its cover—painted by Sir Peter Blake, whose brush once coiled around Sgt. Pepper’s—feels less homage than herald. And the closer, “Devotion,” is not just a song—it’s a statement.

Alejandro Blake’s artframes the collection, but Alexis Taylor’s words—“There’s joy in doing something again and again… We still love doing it”—echo deeper. His voice, familiar yet newly urgent, turns the retrospective into something alive, not done.

Between Nostalgia and Now

The tracklist takes us through the sagas: “Ready for the Floor,” “Boy From School,” “Hungry Child,” “I Feel Better”—each a cultural moment, each now endowed with hindsight. Yet closing with “Devotion,” both song and video filmed in Japan, reposition the archive. It rewrites the narrative: not a conclusion, but a reawakening.

What does it mean for a greatest-hits album to add new music? Is it an epilogue or an ignition?

Legacy That Still Moves

The layering here comes not only from past refrains but from the idea that devotion—to rhythms, to grooves, to creative communion—can still propel. The deliberate choice of Blake’s art and a video set abroad nod to global resonance, evolution, and hum. “Devotion” isn’t a footnote—it feels like the opening line of the next chapter.

So: is Joy in Repetition a catalog or a heartbeat? Is the past enough when the future pulses at your back?

And as the groove loops backward and forward, we wait—breath held for what comes next within the repetition.