There’s a genre I included on last week’s summer pop playlist that I decided to dive deeper into today: Japanese city pop. This wave of what would best (if reductively) be described as “Japanese Steely Dan” was like a sister to the American yacht rock of the 1970s and 80s.

Slide off your hammock and into the waves. Submerge and you’ll hear the tinkle of pearls. Sink farther to reach that ancient orchestra—the Sunset Philharmonic Paradise Symphony, nestled in the belly of time.

Music was baked into the franchise from the beginning, but Ocarina of Time was the game that fully embraced it as part of the world and mythos. Not many games revolve around an ancient wind instrument, and in later entries, players can noodle on guitars, bagpipes, bongos, and even a conductor’s baton.

One of indie’s most reliable engines has been chugging away in the middle of America, whether you knew it or not. Saddle Creek Records, a 50/50 split profit sharing label in Omaha, has for 30 years now been home to some the underground’s big hitters.

Earwyrms is out of the office and will be back on Friday, May 12th. Please enjoy these songs from Shaky Knees 2023 while you wait for our miraculous return.

The scientists here at Earwyrms are always digging for new sonic gold, and well folks, today we struck an enormous vein. There’s an emergent genre down here that just might get us filthy rich if we take it to the ambient market.

The trouble with writing about music every week is you don’t actually end up knowing that much more about music. Quite less, in fact. The time, the work, the attempted balance leads to short cuts, and I become more drawn to the oldies and goodies instead of pressing play on something new.

You can hear dixieland jazz’s verve in the bounce music that came later. Both came from the irrepressible hunger to move, the desperate need to usurp polite society—the inevitably, if you will, of that ass to shake itself.

You come across a buried sea shell humming in the beach. Pick it up, it has a message for you: Wordless, waveform lullabies drape you in velvet and tiptoe up your spine.

I am about to be fulfilled—I have tickets to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra this weekend, proof that Lydia Tár’s influence still leaks like spilled ink. The performance tomorrow will highlight Bach and two of his contemporaries, Handel and Vivaldi, in honor of Johann’s birthday.

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and I thought this would be the perfect time to highlight an instrument without which American mountain music would scarcely exist in today’s form. So here’s a playlist full of Irish fiddle music. If you’ve ever craved the sound, this playlist is forever here for you.

I made The Wyrmy Awards for Best Use of Music in Film to highlight the best musical moments of the year in cinema. Who could forget the Barbarian cut to "Riki Tiki Tavi"? Or when the pounding pulse of "Where Eagles Dare" rings out in Jackass Forever? Don't you dare get me started on Tár!

It is the first week of March, and that clarion marks a coming storm: it's the In Like a Lion issue, our yearly highlight of the heaviest music. For all who love hardcore, black metal, and doom—this week's squall carries a torrent of blood.

Forgive this playlist, as it’s only one song, too long to put on any playlist without dwarfing everything else. The Disintegration Loops is an hour-long ambient analgesic, and about the only thing I can listen to in desolate times.

The future is back, baby! Coming at the heels of two bifurcated years—one by a virus, the other its vaccine—2022 stands tall in history as the year the Great Machine roared back to life. Belch ye black smoke into that unbearable blue sky!

Welcome to your Earwyrms Wyrpped for 2022. This year, we explored a lot of new genres here in the dirt, from phonk to roadhouse, dungeon synth to goth. We got through 42 issues together, but your favorites were the ones that sounded like home. Here are the most popular Earwyrms issues of 2022.

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.