It's finally here: the smell of fallen leaves; stepping over pumpkins; browns and reds and golds; driving around pumpkins; hay-rack rides; pumpkins in the bathroom; sweaters and jeans; swim through pumpkins to unlock your door. Fall shit.

The house’s biggest strength, though, is the music itself. Chelsea Wolfe, Depeche Mode, Portishead, Kavinsky, House of Balloons-era The Weeknd

It's serendipity that we get to celebrate Ravenclaw on this astronomical equilibrium. Ravenclaw is the house that's the hardest to elaborate upon, as they're simplest in attribute (smart), even as they're most complex in their pursuits (getting smarter).

So here we are: The House that No One Wanted. For twenty years, every first-year who gets the Puff has scrambled for self-worth when they take off the Sorting Hat, no matter how strong their self-esteem once was.

Since the 1st was the 20th anniversary of Harry's U.S. release, September for Earwyrms is now officially Pottermonth. Every Friday in September, I'll be highlighting a new House Commons playlist, and we'll be discussing our favorite fictional personality test.

It's been almost three months since the night you took a ride in that flying car. None of your friends will believe your story — to be fair, you're not entirely sure it happened either.

In music, darkness rules — plunking synths, echoing reverb, spectral vocals. These are songs full of creaks and groans, phrases that circle and swirl, the soundtrack of streetlamps. The Halloween playlist is still a ways away, but here's an early taste.

These are songs to play as you jump from the mountain. It's always scary to throw yourself into the unfamiliar — it's hard to trust that you can fly — but I watch others take the leap all the time, and right now I can name a dozen who are better off for it.

This week, I was just throwing some songs into a pot to see what kind of stew came out, and I accidentally made a playlist about burning desire. All the songs started circling the vague image of some second person, a "you" that maybe loved us back, maybe not - in the end, that was irrelevant.

I was feeling nostalgic, so I made a playlist for what I would listen to at a pool party in 2009. This first included all the embarrassing things I listened to back then, but then I thought I'd just focus on what still holds up. I wanted to re-evaluate it all, and see what still sticks.

I’m at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, which is the world’s largest cave system, so I made a playlist of songs that sound like the caves episode of Planet Earth (its best episode). There are also some songs that just sound like Kentucky.

I'll be at Pitchfork Music Festival, here are my favorite songs from some of the artists I'll be seeing. Go out tonight, have fun, pet a dog, fall asleep outside, flirt your heart out.

We've started moving out of our apartment this week, so that nightmare is beginning all over again. That's just the way it is for the renter.

This is a playlist about stargazing, a suggestion courtesy of my friend Ariel, whom I've known for seven years now, which is about how long it took Cassini to get to Saturn.

Listen to my favorite songs of the past six months so you can enjoy them before the summer is over. I wrote about them below in classic backwards-list order, and the playlist mirrors it.

After work on a Friday (today, even!), head home, walk to your nearest beer, and open it. Go out to the porch, or to the balcony, or just to the biggest window in your apartment. The key is to be facing the light of the golden hour, in a relaxed and comfortable place. That's when you hit play.

You can think of it as a soundtrack to Gilead, but it's probably more apt to think of them as worship songs for non-believers. Not that you are all non-believers, but I find it's safer to assume a lack of faith than a preponderance of it. People get a little touchy about the subject.

Once again, I had a large diatribe written out, raging against the corporations of the world on behalf of me, the beleaguered laborer, and once again, the news of today knocked some sense into me. I decided to tone it down a bit.

The prompt, to paraphrase, was Songs to Play if I Owned a Diner. I'm sure you can picture it: I'm wearing the paper hat, the white apron, I'm serving well and wiping down tables, singing to customers in my rich baritone like the clerk at the candy shop from Willy Wonka.

Frequent readers will know that Western Africa is one of my favorite parts of the world, so my expectations were already high when I secured a lift to Bamako.