One of the most frequent questions I get is about how I’ve been able to pick up temporary work throughout my travels without falling afoul of the law.

I need a break between the decade list and the year-end list, so here's a utilitarian playlist for the holidays. Put it on to run interference for those pesky memories of defunct relationships that always ring your mental doorbell in the middle of the holiday party and ruin the eggnog.

I can't leave without saying that I lament this had to be on Spotify because it meant I couldn't put Joanna Newsom on the list. Just know that there's a good chance she would've cracked the Top 10, and go listen to Have One on Me if you never have before.

A large chunk of the Top 40 are love songs, a thing I guess I'm just obsessed with. With music being the most directly emotional art, it's natural that this medium best explores these weird heart feelings.

We're getting to the hardest part now—do I really have to choose between two masterpieces, to arbitrarily put one over another? I do. Which is why I must remind you: these opinions are not definitive; they're not even sound. Best songs are as subjective as bagel preferences.

Lots of sad ones this time—sorry!—that's just how the chips fell this round. As I said last week, this project is not meant to be an edict from some supreme musical being, just a catalog of what this idiot kept coming back to over and over since 2010. Ultimately a narrow purview, but maybe you'll hear something you like.

I could say a bunch of sweeping things about the past ten years, but the truth is a decade is hard to package together coherently. I will say that ten years is fun because it's all about what sticks with you.

Happy Halloween, enjoy the final round of shadow songs. If you still don’t know what you're wearing this Thursday, I’ve made a list of costumes you may be able to pull off.

"Cryptid," as you may know, is a term for a creature that exists in folklore and legend but whose existence is not scientifically proven or accepted. Some things that are cryptids: Bigfoot, Nessie, the Jersey Devil.

This week's playlist is the result of a thought experiment: what if I were asked to DJ a new Monster Mash? This led me deep into this early-2010s occult-flavored club genre called witch house. It's vaporwave's goth sister.

Halloween is all sublimation: we give our base instincts permission to emerge, we indulge in our ancient taste for spirits and specters, we put our real fears aside as we focus on the imaginary—the things that could never actually hurt us, but help us let off some screams.

Now I'm in a perilous position, having a weekly mixtape platform that also doubles as what is essentially a diary, the perfect storm for a broken heart to make a complete ass of itself.

This week's playlist was made to put on when you're cleaning the house. The whole thing revolves around a driving pulse, a specific BPM that rhymes with your work. It's a metronome made to match with your broom and a back-up chorus to keep you pushing along.

It's Friday the 13th, and it's the weekend of the Harvest Moon. Those two things haven't aligned since the start of the millennium, and they won't align again until 2049. It's the night to believe in magic once again.

I'm on vacation and on a budget, which of course means I've been playing hours and hours of The Legend of Zelda (write what you know).

Orphaned tracks are songs that never made it on a proper album, lost gems or throwaway cuts that never made it to a band’s long-form releases. These are your b-sides, rarities, demo sessions, soundtrack contributions, etc.

The Chattahoochee is Atlanta's resident river, and they call it the Hooch, a name as appropriate as any for our 69th issue. It's no Mississippi: it's only about 500 ft. across instead of 2,000.

I had to write a check earlier this week, and while digging through my drawers I came across my old iPod(s)—three black Classics, because each, at one point, I thought I had lost.

I've been reading Communion by Whitley Strieber, which is by now a famous alien abduction narrative and an alleged true story. Movies don't really keep me up at night anymore, but certain books do.

We all need ways to feel less like minions in the everyday corporate slog of modern America. Ways that do not involve waking up earlier.