There are seven days in a week, so here are seven songs that I've been listening to!
This is a hobby I've had for a couple years now. I'd originally started it when first dating my partner, and through 2026 I fell off the practice pretty hard. It's been through the rigamarole of job hunting that I've rediscovered, "Hey, music is important to me, and finding new music helps me a ton in more difficult times," so I thought I'd try translating it into blog format (and relearning how to write a blog for the first time in years.)
Sometimes these playlists have a theme or some type of recurring trend. This week, I'd say it's a lot of "political anxiety" and "conceptualization of nostalgia."
"Usa" - Jeff Rosenstock
Jeff here is a staple within some of my family's rotations, but has never quite stuck with me as much. Post- was the first album that I gave some level of spin years ago, so songs like "Usa" and "9 / 10" ended up technically in my music library without ever getting consistent play.
Well, since a theme of this playlist is "political anxiety," Jeff just happened to resurface at the right time to slide back on here and to grab my attention. Post- as an album was made in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and deals heavily with doubt and uncertainty; "Usa" is one of my favorite types of album openers in its multi-movement design, where it devolves from an incredibly obvious frustration upfront to a washed out and resigned/contemplative synth interlude. Good stuff, Jeff - thanks!
"Amor Fati" - Washed Out
Speaking of washed out synths, Washed Out's "Amor Fati" came on a radio the other week while I was on vacation and embodies "chillwave" very nicely. Ernest Greene's vocals serves an additional instrument to the arrangement rather than taking the lead, and the song often feels comfortably predictable in the the way his voice rises and falls.
"Darkness" - Sweet Trip
Sweet Trip is a "your favorite band's favorite band" type group, or at least the Internet cult-following they developed gives me that impression. It wouldn't surprise me if true since their glitch-infused shoegaze, while not wholly unique, feels forward-thinking in retrospect, or maybe it's the hindsight of having shoegaze emerge as a dominant genre accompanying Insta reels that makes me think that.
Anyway, they remind me greatly of another fantastic 2000's era shoegaze outfit, Asobi Seksu, that I recommend if you dig Sweet Trip's sound.
"Skyline" - Broken Social Scene
Flashback to the year 2018, where I'm working part-time at a Crate & Barrel in the midst of college, and this song comes on several times a day over the radio. I'll be honest in saying that C&B added quite a few great songs to my playlists; I don't know who there was curating the music, but I want to buy them a hot dog.
"Skyline" has an intoxicating atmosphere to me, and if I had to paint an autobiographical narrative of some kind to explain its origins, I'd point to the opening synths of "Where the Streets Have No Name" by U2 as having a reverberating effect on me. Now, any song that feels like it has that expansive and desolate sound evokes a myriad of indescribable feelings—I'd say "Skyline" falls comfortably into that bucket.
"Guided Thunder" - Twisted Teens
Consider this week my first steps into the Twisted Teens frenzy. It's a tough step, to be honest, because I can be a frustrating contrarian that doesn't want to immediately buy into the new popular group. But they're fun and breezy and they've been going on a tear of genre-jumping albums in a single year like John Frusciante circa 2004 so it's not hard to get with it.
"Oblivius" - The Strokes
This song became an earworm after The Strokes's decision to use it to close out their 2026 Coachella set, set to a stimulating reminder of the U.S.'s imperialist history. Not much else to say other than when Julian Casablanca's falsetto works it can really work, and it feels "predictable" enough like the Washed Out track earlier that it's simultaneously comforting and confrontational.
"9 / 10" - Jeff Rosenstock
It's that song I alluded to in Jeff's first appearance on the list!
An honorable mention for this list is "Hope" off of Vampire Weekend's most recent record, and both of these last two songs represent well that feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction—though in two different directions, internally looking vs. externally looking, perhaps.
If there's anything I can take away from this week, it's that I tolerate Jeff now. Thanks Jeff!