Mixtape | June 2026

Some months you know exactly what you're doing. This isn't one of those months. This one is more like okay, what am I actually doing, what do I actually want, what does any of this mean. Not in a crisis way. Just in a regular human way where you're moving through your days and somewhere underneath it all something is quietly trying to sort itself out. This playlist lives in that feeling.

It starts restless because that's where figuring it out usually starts. Weezer and Wednesday kicking things off with a track that shouldn't work as well as it does, The Linda Lindas burning something down, Jack White doing his thing, Wishy making lovesick feel cool. The energy is up but it's nervous energy. Something has to shift, you just don't know what yet.

Then it pulls inward and that's part of it too. The going quiet, the sitting with it. Margaret Glaspy, Belle and Sebastian, Goodnight Texas, grentperez moving through a stretch that gets more interior the deeper you go. Petey USA's Like a Mantra is the one for me in this section. Anxious and melodic and pulsing all at once, vibrant electropop that somehow feels like thinking out loud. I couldn't move it. It belongs right there in the middle of all that searching.

The middle is where it starts to settle. Not solved, just settled. Aaron Lee Tasjan, Cory Branan, Pokey LaFarge, Joey Quiñones, The Jayhawks rolling through a stretch that has a roots lean and a patience to it. Like the playlist stopped running and started walking. Something clicked quietly and nobody made a big deal out of it.

Then it builds and that's the whole thing really. Figuring it out isn't a moment, it's a direction. Since When by Neal Carpenter with Drew and Ellie Holcomb is where the turn happens and then Medium Build's Armor arrives and just sits with you. It's indie rock therapy. It's about recognizing you're a little broken, wanting to fix it, but knowing how easy it is to just pull back into whatever keeps you safe. That push and pull is real and that song nails it and more people need to hear it. Michigander's Taxi kicks the energy back up, and by the time Kam Franklin closes it out with I Got A Lover it feels earned. Not a grand resolution. Just someone who knows who they are again, moving forward.

Thirty-six tracks. Start at one.