All seasons are reading seasons, but this one most of all—what better for the day after Thanksgiving than to wrap yourself in leftovers and sink into a story? This playlist, a sister to last week’s Cozycore, is full of songs I find nice to play while I’m reading.

Grab your weighted blanket and pull out your earmuff headphones because here comes a treat, fresh out the oven: the world’s comfiest playlist, just in time for the holidays. You’re loved, you’re home, you’re baking in your favorite sweater.

Every so often, I find myself foolish enough to make a country music Earwyrms. Arguably, the last era of popular country that was any good was the 1990s, which is precisely where Plains gets all of their inspiration. It was last time any country woman got on the radio, and they led the industry—actually, they dominated.

This is the Earwyrms Chrono-Canon. The Historical Hundred. The 100 Best Songs Ever, in order of their debut, in an attempt to map a sort of historical sense to the form as it has existed in the past century or so.

Happy Halloweekend! Here's a playlist for all that—the ghost hunting, the night walking, exploring the liminal planes. Coffee in costume after midnight. A dog's bark from a dark hillside.

Walk with me past the weathered gravestones, black with ages of grime. At the steps of a mausoleum, I grab my stick of chalk. The School of Goth is now in session.

Dungeon Synth is a genre fit for fantasy novels, inspired by video games, film scores, the neoclassical darkwave of the goth era, and the burgeoning home electronica on the horizon.

Allay your fears with Nightwyrms, our collection of coldwave and minimal synth. When the icy wind blows, it's best to embrace it—roll down those chilled windows and fill your lungs with the night.

It was the year the world was supposed to end. For music, in a own way, it did. As the 2009 class of indie darlings delivered underwhelming follow ups (Shields, Centipede Hz, Swing Lo Magellan—many now, in ten years time, seen as unsung greats), critics were reckoning with the rise of poptimism.

Of all the seasons, fall descends—a cliché so apt as to buck the label. Summer’s elation settles and forms a gelatin of peace. The brain works better in these prime and perfect temperatures. Give your ears a bath with these songs of soothing shadow.

That gum you like? It’s coming back in style—today I made a playlist of bands that would almost certainly play at the Roadhouse from Twin Peaks, from dream pop to darkwave to jazz-flavored country.

With cracked hands and bleary eyes I bring you a playlist comprised almost entirely of songs that came out on this very day, pulled from every stage of the artistic career arc—from veterans like Built to Spill still releasing new albums after decades of fantastic work to mid-career millennial masters like Father John Misty and Arctic Monkeys, all the way down to flag-planting newcomers like Jockstrap and Sudan Archives.

Today’s playlist was inspired by Dragon Con. I packed it full of drift phonk, a newer genre of electronic music born from phonk, a.k.a. chopped-and-screwed hip hop that takes old-school Memphis rap samples, compresses them until their flat as a tin pancake, and buries them beneath distorted 808s and lo-fi trap rhythms.

In 2002, I was listening to All That You Can’t Leave Behind from the backseat of a minivan while I flipped through the pictures in Nintendo Power. I thought all songs debuted through Now That’s What I Call Music! I was Coldplay’s perfect mark—I had no idea what a cliché even was.

Writing is not a resource-rich profession. Sometimes, a Wyrm is the best gift I have to give. And say it with me now: It’s hard to make friends as an adult.

This is the final issue of the Earwyrms Canon. There’s no true theme to bind these ten together, except that they were always going to make the list. These were the songs I thought of first, the allies that I trusted best.

The kids go back to school next week, so why not sit back and listen to something new? I’ve always loved Songs of First Semester more than Songs of the Summer anyhow.

Peyote Rock was built by nature’s outliers—crust-punks and cowpokes, volcanic pariahs, those who need their country music with a glass eye and a switchblade. Don’t know what I mean? Just listen.

I must’ve gotten my hands on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2004, when I was 10 or 11 years old. Grand Theft Auto maintains a dual reputation as one of the greatest video games of all time as well as one of those Matrix-level Y2K-era youth corruptors.

The highlight of Murrells Inlet is Brookgreen Gardens, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. It’s a 9,100 acre sculpture garden, replete with stone-carved mythic figures and lush with ancient live oaks, many older than the signing of the Constitution.