Category: Indie Rock

driving in the suburbs late at night

But not too late because curfew. Suggested talking points, none of which we actually want to write about here, include:

  • the idea of going somewhere differently for growth and then returning to the place you were in before, but different now
  • songs you associate with listening to while driving a car when you actually have very few experiences listening to songs in a car because you live in one of the only walkable cities in america
  • rehearsing coming out speeches
  • living in a different suburb, the wide gap between driving to escape and driving to go home, under the umbrella of driving whilst being alive
  • living with a Stigmatized Mental Illness™️
  • the time between thanksgiving and christmas
  • songs becoming inextricably tied by memory to particular times, whether that be stage of life or a season of year. are these inherently nighttime songs? is the suggestion of a collection of songs being nighttime songs conveyable or inextricable from the personal experience realm?
  • changing so much and learning so much about yourself, and the idea of bringing that to a group of people that only know the Carefully Constructed Identity built to not invite too many questions, which is confusing, difficult
  • the chicagoland area
  • what even is a fulfilling life
  • changing the soundtrack between the drive somewhere and the drive back

how is it still working hours

A sometimes lighter, sometimes spookier version of a deep dark white noise work music playlist than I Hide Down In My Corner Because I Like My Corner. A heavier, screamier version of a noisy rock work music playist than Firefly Was Always Bad. Just to add to the trash garbage lore.

RIYL genres with “post-” in the name, upsetting art, three metal songs in a row that all have the same riff, brief reprieves, you watched half of Chainsaw Man, a second wind on an uninteresting afternoon

gwen stacy’s spiderverse band vision board

look, I know it’s clearly a punk 4-piece, but I’m talkin’ about the watercolor drip SPIDERVIBES, baybeeeeeee

this playlist is for everyone obsessed with the opening scene of the new spiderverse movie. it is all i’ve thought about for a month. this is what if that one-minute of movie soundtrackified punk band warming up was the whole band.

horny bops for sad teens

Hell yeah, it’s a goddamn emo teen sad breakup thirsty horny dance party. If you don’t hear it and think “i am 16 again”, what’s the point? We’d have failed. Dance out your teenage longing.

black tea, sunday night

gentle tunes for soothing times. a chill blend of quiet folk-tinged indie flavors to put on while sitting around with friends. invoke the joys of having best friends who all live within walking distance coming over on sunday night to just sit around and sip some black tea.

slice of life trashfire vibes

Hurting. Longing. Dancing to disco music.

A soundtrack to uneventful teenage days. Not the angsty side of youth, but the biding your time of youth. Music your cooler friends listen to that lodge in your head for processing, vibes from video games that incongruously feel like hanging out at the mall, something something identity. A cross between getting a ride from a friend so you don’t have to take the school bus and a Makoto Shinkai movie. Sort of works either as a playlist for work music or for waiting for everyone to arrive for book club.

firefly was always bad

spicy hot jams for working on your spicy hot takes

imo this is a good one for the last hour of a workday when you’ve emotionally hit a wall and need to rally and by rally i mean reflect on the relationship between the frictions of life and the value of life

sometimes we were wrong about things

version history

[June 27, 2022] the live version on spotify has swapped in some currently available instrumental pillows tunes to try to match the OG’s energy, added a few other songs throughout to address the gap created by how that goal is not, in fact, possible. it feels fucked to act like a tv show is the bad thing in June 2022 in, say, america, but here we are. rage against the dying of the light for ~63 minutes.

[Nov 24, 2021] the OG version of this playlist with a buncha good good pillows instrumentals from FLCL, which are in a constant state of on/off spotify. can be temporarily enjoyed via youtube, until something inevitably goes wrong there too.

wrapping up the work week

the other end of checking your work email on monday morning. a lot of genres, but it’s all friday. less of a getting coffee and drilling down to work playlist and more of a soaking up the morning light and the last cup of coffee of the work week playlist. yesterday was thursday. today, it is friday.

invoking the late-night creative golden hour

A playlist for anyone who gets their best work done around 10:30 pm, but has a day job.

Despite being wildly genre-agnostic, the vibe is pretty consistently mellow, warm, but a little melancholy throughout. All of these songs live in a world that’s mostly gone to bed for the day and has thus gotten pretty quiet. It’s not a late-night playlist that’s going to eventually lull you to sleep, but rather one that’s content to stay up with you for a little while. And if you put it on in the middle of the day, it’ll pretend it’s the nighttime with you.