What's your go-to "the weather is getting warm" album?

Isolation, to me, conjures the feeling of the summer between high school and college, when it seemed that I lived in a Hawaiian shirt and Vans and spent my days walking between friends’ houses in my hometown. This is especially impressive considering Kali Uchis’ debut album didn’t even exist when I was doing those things, but it carries the promise that more days like that could impossibly come. The bassy bossa of “Your Teeth In My Neck” is the soundtrack of a flirtatious summer job, while “Just A Stranger” is the party you have with some cash freshly in your pocket. Isolation somehow wormed its way into my nostalgia with its frenzy and its languor—its heat, frankly. [Drew Gillis]

I first discovered Kurt Vile in August of 2018 when I had just moved to—and still believed in the promise of—Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Nothing made me feel cooler or more in tune with my new neighborhood than long walks among the street art and warehouses with Vile’s warm guitar and meandering vocals looping on my (still wired!) earbuds. While I’ve since moved away and grown a lot more disillusioned with that whole milieu (as everyone who lives in Williamsburg eventually does), Wakin On A Pretty Daze still immediately brings me back to a sense of wide-eyed wonder and unfettered hope that I really crave after the long winter months. Even though the album features tracks with names like “Pure Pain,” “Too Hard,” and “Snowflakes Are Dancing,” to me it will always be hazy days, white wine on a friend-of-a-friend’s roof, joints on the fire escape, thrift store finds, and lazy afternoons. It’s an album to lose yourself in and one that feels at this point like an old friend. I only dust it off the first few months of spring so it never loses that sun-dappled magic. [Emma Keates]

When I first moved to Chicago, in the stereotypically (but no less shockingly) cold winter of 2006, I would spend hours upon hours warming up at Reckless Records on Milwaukee Avenue to break up my walk home from the train. One day, I popped in and heard the tremolo guitar of “(I Can’t Seem To) Make You Mine,” with Alasdair MacLean’s gentle, beautiful voice hovering over the song like a perfectly shaped cloud on a sunny day. I was so taken by it that, after much deliberation, I cleared my throat and nervously asked the woman behind the counter who was playing, as if it’s a crime to inquire about something you’re absolutely going to buy. I’m pretty sure this is the only time I’ve ever done this, and I’m glad I did: The whole record, and particularly that aforementioned track, “My Own Face Inside The Trees,” and “When I Came Home From The Party,” was pretty much the soundtrack to that spring for me, a sonically fitting staple in my discman as the temps rose and the sun peeked out and people finally shed their parkas and I could actually explore this new, exciting city. [Tim Lowery]

No album screams pleasant springtime to me more than Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour, and not just because of its perfectly timed March 2018 release. Everything about it is warm, sunshiney, and soothing—the title song itself strongly evokes this imagery. It’s the musical healing I need after the end of a cold, dreary East Coast winter. Sorry to rely on you so heavily, Kacey, but damn do you deliver.

Golden Hour can appear simple on the surface, especially in my favorite track “Happy & Sad.” (What else do you expect with lyrics like “And I’m the kind of person / Who starts getting kinda nervous / When I’m having the time of my life?”). But it’s a memorable, cohesive, psychedelic album with beautiful melodies. Imagine popping your headphones in and going on a long, sunny walk with “High Horse,” “Golden Hour,” or “Butterflies” to keep you company. That’s the promise of a good summer right there. [Saloni Gajjar]

Destination Failure isn’t what anyone would call a typical summer album. The third record from Chicago-based pop-punk band The Smoking Popes is, in places, lighthearted—it even includes a cover of “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, which lends a dreamy, whimsical vibe to the whole thing—but there’s something about it that feels decidedly melancholic. The record label hated it so much they almost didn’t release it, and after it flopped financially, the band took a seven-year hiatus. Even the lead single, “Let’s Hear It For Love,” isn’t as cheery as the name implies.

I’ve always struggled to enjoy the warmer months; I could never relate to the happy, carefree vibes that typically signify summer. I want to have those blissful summer feelings and memories, but I don’t; the best I can do is acknowledge that summer just never worked out right for me, that the classic depiction of the season just isn’t what I experience. I think that’s why The Smoking Popes have always felt like a warm-weather band to me: singer/guitarist Josh Caterer’s crooning vocals are easy to get lost in, but they hide some pretty wistful lyrics. “Megan,” one of the Popes’ most beloved songs, opens with a line so romantic it’ll make you melt: “Butter on a summer’s day when she’s around.” And yet, the lyrics as a whole are pretty devastating. Destination Failure is beautiful, and it’s sad, and that dichotomy is exactly what the weather getting warmer feels like to me. [Jen Lennon]

I’m a sucker for piano-based hip-hop, and “Sunshine” paints an almost unfairly summery scene over its delicate, charming hook. Listening to Sad Clown Bad Summer 9 when it’s not summer is a surefire way to make you want to move somewhere it never snows. But if you do live somewhere that has seasons, and you save it until that first day that’s bearable without a jacket, the opener is the perfect track to shake off the winter blues. Your seasonal affective disorder (which the Minneapolis rappers know well) is replaced by warm rays, bug noises, bike rides, and popsicles. Then you zip through the rest of the hazy, breezy nostalgia of the other four tracks on the EP, ranging from innocent young love to spraying a tag while you’re kinda high in the middle of the balmy night. The whole thing takes less than 18 minutes—perfect to throw on in the car for a quick errand with the windows down, or down low as the background to a BBQ. [Jacob Oller]

Nothing carries the early summer breeze like the opening riff to Bent Outta Shape’s “Disappointment Rock,” the opening track on their seminal 2006 swan song, Stray Dog Town. The band, known for its sloppy sets and hard partying, sounds like they’re dancing all over the track as late singer Jamie Ewing screams, “I just want to be in your company” from the back of his ravished throat. The whole album reeks of cheap beer, cigarette breath, and B.O., like you’re in the dingiest, hottest basement watching the best band in the world. When the sun’s out, “Disappointment Rock”—and Stray Dog Town—is its soundtrack. [Matt Schimkowitz]

My way into this album was its most famous track, “California Stars,” which brings to mind al fresco dinner parties under cafe lights on warm evenings. I think I’ve put it on every summer playlist I’ve ever made. It took me longer to appreciate the beauty of Mermaid Avenue as a complete work, but it’s the perfect album to put on in the background when you want to create a mood that’s airy and welcoming. It’s filled with terrific, folk-rock tunes featuring lyrics written decades earlier by Woody Guthrie set to music by Bragg and Wilco. From contemplative acoustic tracks like “At My Window Sad And Lonely” and “Birds And Ships” (featuring the sweet voice of Natalie Merchant) to the bouncy funk of “Hoodoo Voodoo” its jangly guitars, saloon piano, and breezy beats make you want to fling open the doors and let the light in. [Cindy White]

A little lazy, a little sleazy—nothing captures the slow vibe of a warm quasi-summer afternoon like the strains of Spoon’s 2005 hit Gimme Fiction. You could probably write 1,000 words just on the feelings evoked by lead single “I Turn My Camera On,” a song I’m pretty sure no human being has ever listened to in its entirety without shimmying their shoulders at least a little. But the whole of Gimme Fiction is shot through with a paradoxically lethargic energy— the kind of thing that makes you excited to build up your strength to do a whole lot of nothing but basking in the steadily rising heat for an entire afternoon. [William Hughes]

Personally, I think that every year when the weather starts warming up, people are going to start coming back to Lorde’s Solar Power more and more. The album just didn’t really connect when it came out, and I’ll admit, it didn’t hit me as hard as Melodrama. There’s a lot going on—the climate anxiety, the grappling with fame, the sort of “delusional girl” persona present on songs like “Mood Ring” and “Leader Of A New Regime”—that makes the album hard to digest. I didn’t think I was in love with it, but every springtime since it’s beckoned me back with its curious magic. There’s a lot of strange beauty on Solar Power, a sense of blossoming that feels perfectly suited for newly warm weather. And every year, I feel like I understand better the twisted humor, the frivolity with an undercurrent of darkness and doom, the character at the center of the album that makes it so compelling. Some warm sunny day, everyone else is going to see the vision, too! [Mary Kate Carr]