Reading
The Notes
Long-form writing on what we curate and why. Liner notes for individual playlists, methodology pieces, the occasional opinion you didn't ask for. Slower than the feed, deliberately.
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Angine de Poitrine on KEXP: math rock in the cracks between notes
Notes on the masked Québécois duo's full performance on KEXP, recorded at Trans Musicales 2025 — what microtonal math rock actually sounds like, why two people in giant paper-mâché masks pulled 7.5 million views, and why we've kept Angine de Poitrine as a featured artist with no playlist slot.
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Foo Fighters at the Tiny Desk: a stadium band remembers a bedroom
Notes on the Foo Fighters' first NPR Tiny Desk concert — Dave Grohl and Pat Smear visibly enjoying themselves behind a desk, a five-song set that runs from a brand-new single to 'Everlong,' and what a band built for arenas sounds like when you take the arena away.
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Jyoty's Boiler Room London is the carnival warm-up master class
Notes on Jyoty's Boiler Room London set — an hour and nineteen tracks of dancehall, garage, Afrobeats, club rap, and Carnival rhythm built to land at the exact moment the room realizes it's a party. A DJ set as playlist, and how it lines up with what we already keep in heavy rotation.
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The Tiny Desk feature: eight performances we keep coming back to
A running feature on our favorite NPR Tiny Desk concerts — Foo Fighters, Bad Bunny, Sting & Shaggy, Anderson .Paak, Mac Miller, T-Pain, Usher, Coldplay — and how they line up with the artists already in heaviest rotation across this site. The format is the point: real bands in a real room, no production tricks, the song doing the work.
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How to sequence a mix: a working manual
The actual rules we use to put 50 songs in an order that holds for two hours. First track, last track, the moves in between, and why shuffle is the enemy of a good mix.
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3608: liner notes for a New Year's Eve in Boston
Liner notes for the 203-track playlist we built for a single New Year's Eve party at the Westin in Boston, room 3608. Why Outkast slots between Britney and the Chili Peppers, what the room actually sounded like at 1:30 a.m., and the philosophy behind sequencing 12 hours of music with no shuffle button.
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