Artists

Theres so many songs that shape the music we create, and its hard to put them together in a playlist that is under 50 songs. Its always all over the place. I actually had bandmates tell me my list had to be shorter than this. Hit me up for the extended playlist if you like. I also have four other playlists that the rest of our band members are happy to share with what theyre listening to right now. ~Eric Nordby

JR JRs Playlist

Tracks:

The Kinks- “Lola"

The Allman Brothers- “Melissa”

Dolly Parton- “Jolene”

The Beatles- “Julia”

Starship- “Sara”

Stephen malkmus- “Jenny and the ess-dog”

Weezer- “Buddy Holly”

OutKast- “Rosa parks”

Rolling Stones- “Angie”

JR JR- “Caroline”

The Allman Brothers- “Jessica”

The Beatles- “eleanore Rigby”

Counting Crows- “mr Jones”

Lou bega- “Mambo number 5”

The Police - “Roxanne"

At the time of this writing, the primary Spotify playlist by Four Tet (a.k.a UK producer/DJ Kieran Hebden) spans 599 songs and runs over 51 hours. By the time you read these words, it will have probably grown. Over the past few months, it seemed to serve primarily as a vehicle for Hebden to build anticipation for his ninth long-player, New Energy. At one point, the title of the playlist—typically an evolving string of emojis—was recently updated to include the album’s release date (Sept. 29), and he’s been adding tracks from the record as they’ve been released, mixing them in with songs from peers (Bicep), inspirations (Sly Stone), and aliases (um, 00110100 01010100, which is the artist page stub where an album of Four Tet b-sides resides in Spotify).Prior to that, the playlist garnered a bit of back in January, when Hebden used it to compile songs by artists from countries impacted by Donald Trump’s travel ban, including Syrian-born singer Omar Souleyman, whose album To Syria, With Love was produced by Hebden. "Its basically a place for me to share things Im listening to, and is becoming a good personal archive of music Ive enjoyed," Hebden told NPR about his playlist at the time.That’s about as coherent a definition as you could need or want. The playlist isn’t a mix and it’s not designed to be; while it flows together in parts, it’s capricious by design. It works reasonably well if you listen to it on shuffle, though expect to be taken down some pretty dark alleys, such as “3” by noise unit Pita (a.k.a. Austria’s Peter Rehberg, who runs the Mego label), which is a boss tune and a personal favorite of this author, but likely to clear a room with its jet-engine feedback shrieking. That “3” is flanked here by everything from Joni Mitchell to CAN to Coltrane to Autechre to Burial to Radiohead to HAIM to Prince to Seefeel... well, the sprawl is precisely the point. (It’s two whole days worth of music, after all.)DJ mixes are a dime-a-dozen, and it’s not hard to find plenty by Four Tet out there in the ether. (This Tokyo set from Dec. ‘13 is particularly smokin’.) What’s much more rare to find is such a comprehensive compendium of all the sounds that go into an artist’s aesthetic. For a veteran like Hebden, an experimental cosmonaut who’s as likely to fold 2-step garage into his music as he is ‘70s jazz fusion or Nigerian funk (or...Selena Gomez), a standard 15-track playlist simply wouldn’t capture the breadth of his tastes. Hell, 10 of those wouldn’t. At 599 tracks and counting, this mix is at least beginning to come close.

This playlist was curated by Soft as Snow. Like what you hear? Subscribe to the playlist here, and check out their music here. And be sure to pick up their upcoming album, Deep Wave.Since its inception five years ago, the Houndstooth label has quickly emerged as one of the leading lights of progressive, experimental electronic music. From Marquis Hawkes to Guy Andrews, the musicians on the label have consistently privileged artistry and innovation, and they continue to push boundaries. The label also oversaw the emergence of immensely talented Call Super, who would go on to become one of this generations more acclaimed new electronic musicians. To celebrate five years releasing electronic music, Houndstooth are delighted to offer a free 15 track compilation Hound5tooth, available here.The Norwegian-born, Berlin-based duo Soft as Snow are one of the Houndstooth’s stand-out acts. Their sound mingles the more gothic-tinged edges of post-punk with liberal swaths of classic Detroit techno and a splash of glitch. The result is a sound that is foreboding and mercurial. The group recently got together to capture some of their favorite synth classics. The playlist is titled “Dark ‘80s Synth Pop,” though most of the tracks are taken from their contemporaries in the synth trenches.

L.A.-based artist Actually Huizenga is a natural-born provocateur, down to the name she’s given her band, Patriarchy. On their debut album, Asking for It, Huizenga howls over a jarring yet poppy mix of industrial and goth. Her perspective is fully rooted outside any box or system, as she plays with social constructs of faith and morality while successfully messing with our heads—all in good fun, and good music, of course. To complement her own provocative tales, she’s put together a mix just for us, one that’s as sinister as it is stimulating.Says Actually of the playlist: “Some sweet songs that are also sexy for when you bring someone special home.”

Vancouver-based Necking manage to make the tightly wound jitteriness of classic post-punk sound positively fresh on their debut album, <I>Cut Your Teeth</I>. The fearless female foursome have a dark sense of humor but an even sharper sense for melodies that wriggle and bite—just see the fabulously fiery single “Big Mouth,” which carries the angst of indie-rock greats like Sleater-Kinney and Pixies. To live fully by their name, they’ve put together a playlist for your next necking session, although it comes with a mighty big disclaimer … Say Necking about the playlist: “Here’s a list of songs to make out to. Not, like, romantically. This mix only works for revenge makeouts.”

The world has gotten smaller. If you compare the U.S. and U.K. Top 40 pop charts these days, you’ll mostly see the same batch of songs on both. It’s probably a function of the Information Age turning cultural variations into one big, transatlantic pile of homogeneity.But it wasn’t always that way. In decades past, the British and American pop charts were almost entirely different creatures. Americans trawling through the U.K. Top 40 would encounter a slew of songs and artists that were foreign to them in every sense of the word, as well as some they might know but would never have expected to have mainstream appeal.The U.S. Top 40 has always been known for playing it safe. Rarely does anything too far outside the margins pop up. But in England of old, you could find edgy, underground artists rising to the top as well as utterly eccentric bits of weirdness with no readily discernible explanation, the results of the kind of old-fashioned regionalism that’s been increasingly phased out.This collection of U.K. Top 40 hits from the ’60s through the ’90s is designed to astonish Americans who’ve grown used to thinking of the pop charts as the home of the lowest common denominator. On one end of the spectrum are the artists too cool, too quirky, or too in-your-face to ever score U.S. pop hits. That encompasses everything from the doomy post-punk of Joy Division and Public Image Ltd. to the goth glory of Bauhaus, the seminal electro-pop of Kraftwerk, the punk roar of The Damned, and the thrash-metal madness of Megadeth.But before you decide the U.K. musical mainstream is just exponentially cooler than that of the U.S., take a look at the other end of the spectrum. There’s goofy pre-WWII pastiche, Peter Sellers’ mock-dramatic recitative of “A Hard Day’s Night,” a loopy-sounding brass-band instrumental, a ska remake of a tune whose only lyrics are “Ne Ne Na Na Na Na Nu Nu,” and plenty of other bizarre entries unknown to most Americans.It all adds up to one of the most schizophrenic playlists you’re ever likely to experience, swooping back and forth from the sublime to the ridiculous with giddy glee. And the breathless momentum incurred will echo the mercurial feeling of following the U.K. Top 40 in the pre-internet era.

Previously known as Sister Crayon, California duo Rituals of Mine make the type of shadowy and sultry music that’s best consumed in the darkest of hours. Indeed, their newest EP, SLEEPER HOLD, carries the weight of tragedy and trauma, as it comes more than three years after lead singer Terra Lopez lost her father to suicide and her best friend to a fatal accident. Still, the songs are not exactly grim or gloomy but rather sharp and bold, exuding the sexy confidence of trip-hop at its finest (think: Tricky, with whom Lopez has collaborated) and electro-R&B at its dreamiest. While the EP is a form of therapy in its own right, Lopez also has a selection of songs she continually goes back to when life becomes unbearable—and she’s shared them with us here.Says Terra of the playlist: “These are the songs that I’ve clung to over the years (new and old) when I’ve been at my lowest. Before I started taking antidepressants, these tracks were what kept me going, focused, and motivated to get through the day.”Photo credit: Jeffrey LaTour

On her debut album, With Me, which moves from cheeky pop tracks to heartwarming ballads to empowering anthems, Tatum Lynn sounds well beyond her 19 years. Still, the Arizona-based singer/songwriter glosses it all with a youthful vibrancy that’s infectious. Through it all, she channels a little of Ariana Grande’s sass (see single “Later Baby, XO” with its “thank u, next” vibe) and Taylor Swift’s evocative storytelling—and we think she’d dig that latter comparison, given that Ms. Swift shows up on Lynn’s Car Jams playlist more than once.Says Tatum: “This playlist is definitely all music I would jam out to in my car! It reminds me of road trips I have taken with my girlfriends and how we just belt out each song like we were putting on our very own concert. I see people doing this with songs from my album, <<With Me>>, and am hoping one day I’ll pass by a car of girls blasting and putting on their own road-trip concert of ‘Later Baby, XO’!!”Photo Credit: Nick Spanos

Grey Mcmurray creates a haunting baroque mix that bounds up and down a whole spectrum of emotions without ever letting up. On his hypnotizing debut solo album, <I>Stay Up</I>, he fuses classical and ambient music with the poignancy of a singer/songwriter unleashing his most vulnerable secrets. It’s music that’s beautiful and terrifying at once, and cinematic in the way it constantly builds tension. To give us some perspective on his wide and fascinating range of sounds and influences, Mcmurray put together this Oslo playlist just for us. Says Grey of the playlist: “All of this music feels inevitable. Like eggs or pancakes or coffee finding their way to the start of the day. Different slots, but all of them tumbling unconsciously toward their resting place in eternity. I don’t mean to imply any label for any position. Just that, taken together, words like <I>high</I> or <I>low</I> or <I>pop</I> or <I>serious</I> or <I>old</I> or <I>new</I> evaporate, as if they were never really there. (I don’t think they were ever really there.) Also, when down these help me.”