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As we near the year's end, #NowPlaying recommends songs that slipped through the cracks, but remain in our headphones.

"Wish I Loved" is a song for those who have love to give, but lack a worthy recipient. From KIRBY's latest EP, Sis. He Wasn't the One, the song describes different ways partners come through for one another, from listening on a bad day to serving as a designated driver. It's a reminder that real love isn't about fanatical devotion, but about showing up and being present. When KIRBY sings, "I wish I loved somebody that much," it's clear that you can't offer this type of love to just anyone. It must be reciprocated and honored.

As we near the year's end, #NowPlaying recommends songs that slipped through the cracks, but remain in our headphones.

To an exceedingly esoteric portion of Gen Z, few had a better 12 months than Drain Gang ambassador Bladee. The Fool, his fifth studio album, was a saccharine trance-inspired record and silly bright spot in 2021; to me, however, the Swedish rapper performs to his highest capabilities when assisted by other artists. His excellent tape with Mechatok, Good Luck, came out last December, and his song with Varg2™ marks his best performance of the year.

"SHINIE"'s title reflects the music itself: shimmering, reflective, alluring. Bladee's tracks are filled with an ever-present naivety, as if he's materialized in front of you with an effervescent halo like the Ghost of Innocence Past. Through layers of auto-tune, lines like the opener "sunglasses on at night, I can not see competition" carry an unbridled joy. Listening to Bladee is like discovering beams of sound from another planet: fleeting, yet indicative of something beautiful just out of your grasp. By the track's latter half – as Bladee vocalizes "change for me" over layers of twinkling, bouncing synths – you're fully immersed into the world he and Varg2™ have created, one of delicate emotional intimacy.

As we near the year's end, #NowPlaying recommends songs that slipped through the cracks, but remain in our headphones.

Whether it concerns her mental health, romantic woes or sexuality, Marie Ulven – the force behind girl in red – is not afraid of being candid. Her first full-length album, this year's if i could make it go quiet, deviates from previous bedroom pop material; a newfound sonic intensity pairs well with the album's vivid, often harsh, thematic content.

girl in red exhibits this pairing best in " Did You Come?," a tune about the jealousy of seeing a lover happy with someone else. It's sexual without being sexy, full of hurt yet upbeat enough that you can still thrash around a bit. To have a song and an entire album fill this strange niche of caustic but exuberant is almost an enigma of sorts, but girl in red executes it perfectly.

As we near the year's end, #NowPlaying recommends songs that slipped through the cracks, but remain in our headphones.

In April, 2020, as the pandemic was ramping up, composer Richard Danielpour was worried about his health. To calm his nerves, he listened to pianist Simone Dinnerstein's Bach recordings. Then an idea sprouted. For Dinnerstein, he'd write a 15-movement cycle of piano pieces (American Mosaic) inspired by the virus and the heroes risking their lives. There are sections titled "Teachers & Students," "Rabbis & Ministers" and this one, dedicated to "Doctors & Interns," which unfolds a calm, long-lined melody, tinged with shadows. Dinnerstein made the album in her living room during lockdown. In Danielpour's liner notes, which are dated January, 2021, he says he hopes the album will bring comfort to those who have suffered and "I pray that we will see the light at the end of this extraordinarily dark tunnel." And one year later, where are we?

As we near the year's end, #NowPlaying recommends songs that slipped through the cracks, but remain in our headphones.

Is it wrong to say that I forgot Christina Aguilera was Latina? Even for those of us that pride ourselves on pop scholarship, Xtina's second album Mi Reflejo was an early-career blip, one widely eclipsed by the staying power of her self-titled debut. As this year found several pop stars returning to their sonic roots (looking at you Camila), Aguilera enlisted heavy-hitters for her own contribution: the Spanish language single "Pa Mis Muchachas." Aided by Becky G, Nicki Nicole and Nathy Peluso, the song is a smooth guaracha ode to the Latina. With a catchy chorus and her signature riffs, Aguilera's vocals work well alongside her team of collaborators.

Still, it's interesting how after years of releasing stadium-filling pop music, she's decided to return to her roots. It makes me wonder about the authenticity of her sudden pivot in aesthetics. Is it because Latin music is in right now? An untapped market to the mainstream pop girl machine? Or, alternatively, does she finally feel comfortable after two decades of hitmaking to return to the sound that has been with her since the start of her career, this time without fear of flopping?

As we near the year's end, #NowPlaying recommends songs that slipped through the cracks, but remain in our headphones.

For the opening of "Uncle Chris Car," Brooklyn rapper Joell Ortiz drops us head first into a detailed account of his own birth: "Fresh out the womb, scour the room, a new flower just bloomed / My momma tells me, 'You was 'posed to come out me in June."

Upon leaving the hospital, the family loads into his uncle's car, driving home to the projects. From here, Ortiz walks us through a harrowing childhood of poverty and violence. He nails his point home by proclaiming that "If God really wanted me to get far, then why my Uncle Chris car made a left / He should've made a right," showing us how environment and circumstance can dramatically change a person's life trajectory.

As we near the year's end, #NowPlaying is recommending songs that slipped through the cracks, but remain in our headphones.

It's easy to overlook legacy rock stars these days. The current wave of talented millennial and Gen Z songwriters is hard enough to keep up with, and it's not like many guitar heroes make their most memorable work in their 50s. All of which is why you may not have heard the title track to Liz Phair's latest album, Soberish -- but, damn, if this isn't one of the best rock songs of the year. A lopsided guitar hook makes for an instantly recognizable intro (one of the most essential ingredients to a memorable song, imho). Her lyrics tell the story of an awkward romantic encounter with humor, grace and sincerity. And there's this moment during the final refrain when the song's jittery percussion and guitar adds a warm bassline, casting off the anxiety of the previous three minutes and ending the night in a cathartic embrace. It all makes "Soberish" a lock for that inevitable Liz Phair greatest hits compilation.

As we near the year's end, #NowPlaying recommends songs that slipped through the cracks, but remain in our headphones.

According to the Collins Dictionary, dépaysement refers to "the feeling of disorientation that occurs when you find yourself in a country that is not your home." Rapper and producer Lushlife — along with dälek — captures this feeling by constructing waves of surrealistic bars over a dreamy boom-bap beat. A chopped up children's choir sample adds to the song's ethereality, but when free-jazz titans Irreversible Entanglements are added to the mix, "Dépaysement" explodes into a fiery nine-minute avant-garde epic. By tapping into the adventurous spirit of free improvisation, "Dépaysement" ushers us past the limits of our comfort zone, taking us on a journey far beyond convention.

As we near the year's end, #NowPlaying is recommending songs that slipped through the cracks, but remain in our headphones.

Like an early holiday gift, every November a bespoke collection of deeply ambient soundscapes arrives via the Cologne, Germany-based label Kompakt. This year's Pop Ambient 2022 offers 15 floating soundscapes spanning over two-and-a-half hours.

Among the standouts is "Weiht" by Morgen Wurde, who is working here with vocalist Maria Estrella. The title could be translated as "Consecrates," and it is a song to get completely lost in. Listen for the subterranean rumblings which anchor the music with a gravitas that feels almost sacred. Estrella's wispy voice swirls around billowing waves of airy electronics and subtle percussive effects; as the music winds down, you can hear what sounds like the gentle plucking of a Japanese shamisen.

So if you're feeling a little anxious these days – and hey, who isn't – mix yourself a holiday cocktail and put this track on repeat.

As we near the year's end, #NowPlaying is recommending songs that slipped through the cracks, but remain in our headphones.

Moin is a post-punk trio with deep ties to London's electronic music scene — Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead make up Raime with percussionist Valentina Magaletti (Tomaga, Vanishing Twin) — and you can hear that precision infiltrate its debut album, Moot! The exclamation point in the album title is well earned; this is a dagger play of riff wreckage, with bass lines that groove as much as they open portals to other dimensions. The band exists somewhere in the deconstructed '90s punk nexus of Fugazi, Unwound and Shellac, but its high-definition payoff is somehow more psychedelic. For me, Magaletti's drumming is the draw, especially on a track like "Crappy Dreams Count" – the claustrophobic riff repeats and mutates throughout, but the drums shiver and shake with the electricity of a drum machine that's grown limbs.

See more #NowPlaying recommendations from Viking's Choice

As we near the year's end, #NowPlaying recommends songs that slipped through the cracks, but remain in our headphones.

On "Bed-Stuy Is Burning," veteran rapper Skyzoo laments how gentrification has torn apart the community that he once knew. Over a gorgeous, jazz-infused beat, Skyzoo runs down a vivid and loving detailing of life in the Brooklyn neighborhood that birthed him. With its soaring brass section and a slick vocal sample taken from Da Bush Babees' "Remember We," the chorus is heartbreaking as Skyzoo pleads to cities and communities throughout the nation: "Please, Philly, don't let this happen to you / Please, Atlanta, don't let this happen to you / Please, DMV, don't let this happen to you..."

According to an old European superstition, it's bad luck if a barn owl lands on your house and doesn't leave. That's key to appreciating Leoš Janáček's haunting miniature "The Barn Owl has not Flown Away," part of On an Overgrown Path, a cycle of short pieces that act almost like diary entries in the Czech composer's turbulent life. Janáček lost his 20-year-old daughter to typhoid fever in 1903, about two years after his "barn owl" was composed. Bad luck indeed. But Janáček's quirky music lives on in several adaptations. Originally written for harmonium, the pieces were later transcribed for piano by the composer. This colorful string arrangement played by the Camerata Zürich is a new creation by violinist Daniel Rumler. Jagged outbursts depicting the owl alternate with folk-like, lyrical passages that lend a bittersweet call and response to this powerfully peculiar music.

Beach House has perfected the "escapist" song, which knocks you into dizziness and elation, heightened by those rotating, shimmering synths... it may also have the power to temporarily cure you of seasonal depression. "Over and Over," from the Baltimore's pair's new album, Once Twice Melody, is made for those few minutes between sunset and night — when purplish light extinguishes and noses turn red from the cold. The song's midpoint seems to signal the onset of pure darkness, as the synths swell, as if to fill the emptiness of a void.

The lyrics, which gently circle in on each other, are simple and hopeful against a heady backdrop: "A flicker in the sky / Reflects the dying light / Wherever you may go, a halo / And all that is lit (And all that is lit) / Surrounds you / As all the lights go down." The circularity of the song is key to its Whitman-esque optimism — that, despite the perpetual return of night, it will someday lift. "The night (The night) / That has (That has) no end (Over and over) / Will be (Will be) the last (The last), my friend."

"Who would ever pay to see me?" Quinn Christopherson humbly asks on "Loaded Gun," the third and final track off his I Am Bubblegum EP. Christopherson wrote the song before winning NPR Music's 2019 Tiny Desk Contest and touring with artists like Lucy Dacus and Courtney Barnett — back when he thought he'd "never get to play music out of Alaska," as he says in a press statement.

"Loaded Gun" is a love letter to Christopherson's younger self that yearns with sweet specificity: groceries bought from a truck stop, the one and only tank top he owns, the familiarity of rhubarb pie and his grandmother's reassurance that he can always return home. "Your boy," Christopherson pauses just before the beat comes in, "he needs to run."

Coming in under the wire of l'automne de meuf triste (or "sad girl autumn," ushered in this year by a "Sad Girl Autumn Version" of a Taylor Swift song), Angèle's "On s'habitue" discusses difficulty and heartbreak that never goes away. "On s'habitue" is a coming-of-age narrative that's directed at young adults trying to understand themselves and their places in the world — and while the Belgian singer-songwriter sings in French, it's a universal sentiment that American listeners will appreciate.

On "On s'habitue," Angèle leans into the growing pains with acceptance. The music behind the lyrics barely changes, chugging along to a relatively upbeat rhythm so seamlessly the audience gets used to it, just as the lyrics suggest. But the caveat in the chorus gives the song the nuance it needs: "On s'habitue toujours à tous / sauf peut être à perdre ce qu'on aime" ("we get used to everything / except maybe to losing what we love"). Even when it feels like we are used to all the pains of life, we still need to afford ourselves the opportunity to hurt.

See more #NowPlaying recommendations from Viking's Choice

Aspidistrafly – singer-songwriter April Lee and producer Ricks Ang – traffics in a lush tranquility, attuned to the ever-changing movement of age and landscape. A Little Fable, released a decade ago, found a second life via fashionable fairies on TikTok, but now the Singapore-based duo returns to deepen its abstract, pastoral beauty with Altar of Dreams (out Feb. 25). In its gauzy-yet-glossy arrangement of flute, strings, clarinet, saxophone and piano, "The Voice of Flowers" feels less like the wispy Vashti Bunyan influence of Aspidistrafly's past, approaching something more like an ambient Adele ballad ornamented by environmental field recordings. Lee doesn't belt out her romantic sorrow here, but hangs it in the chasm of her lower register, to survey "the furthest crevices of the earth / We voyaged through death and birth."

It's rare to hear artists share their thoughts on the matter of parasocial relationships. In comes 19-year-old Talia Goddess with her debut single "Poster Girl;" co-signed by A$AP Ferg, Goddess seamlessly glides between singing and rapping about stardom's confinement and one-dimensionality. A risky move for a brand new artist, Goddess shares her disdain for celebrity idolatry with a refreshing, unabashed cool.

"I got you stuck in my mind / Poster girl I want you to be mine / A figment of my imagination, this romance is my best creation," Goddess sings on the hook. Accompanied by a funky bassline, stacked harmony line and fascinating drum section, "Poster Girl" is an enchanting siren song. Endlessly hypnotic, the track replicates the effect that the titular "Poster Girl" has on her fans for the listener.

There is a specific sort of kinship between fellow Floridians, especially ones who've fled the state for far-flung places. Put enough of us in a conversation and we'll inevitably bemoan and commiserate (and probably swap Publix stories, too). But, for so many of us, there's an undeniable underlying beauty that keeps us coming back home — if not physically, at least emotionally.

Wild Pink's John Ross is one of us: raised in Florida, he now calls upstate New York home. And though there have always been references to the Sunshine State across his catalog, he's never been as explicit as he is on the new standalone track "Florida," which he calls a love letter to the state. Like its namesake and subject, it's sweeping and sprawling, with gentle drum brushes and pedal steel marking time's passage. Built around a piano loop composed after time away from music during lockdown, "Florida" has an undulating energy like an unfurling landscape.

While there's certainly art that extols Florida's beauty and endless memes that make light of the state's unrivaled weirdness, it's rare to hear something that understands its duality — chain restaurant margaritas, but also the way the water can feel haunted by memory. "Florida" manages to articulate the genuine pull a place, however flawed, can have on you.

Singer, songwriter and producer Orion Sun possesses a particular gift for making songs that practically glow with warmth and intimacy. For "Concrete," she taps into this energy with lyrics that depict a love so big and enduring, it can embrace a romantic partner, friends, and family, even stretching out to the ancestors on the other side. Over a smooth and synth-infused groove produced by Rostam, Orion Sun takes account of the many soft and intentional ways we show this love: holding hands, sharing songs on an iPod, and simply taking care of one another.

The volatility of new love can be an excitement or a detriment depending on the moment. In "Fixed Gear," the self-described "glitter emo alt rock" quartet Snarls explores the space between these feelings. In her lilting voice, Chlo White parses the first steps of love: hesitant, but wondering what the other person's thinking, what they carry inside. White sings about feeling guarded herself, but wants to open up and let love bloom — guitars suddenly surge behind her as she lets her true intentions show: "I wanna make you come to life / All the way / So I'll never have to worry that you'll fade."

Denver's Allison Lorenzen has spent time making her way back from intertwined musical and romantic turmoil, and has built her first solo outing, Tender, out of the process. On "Chalk," the light and dark coexist — the remnants of what she's overcome still linger in the periphery. Twinkling droplets of piano keys glitter her ascendant choir-like vocals, bolstered with a low-end fuzz foundation from fellow Denverite Madeline Johnston (of "heaven-metal" outfit Midwife). At the song's conclusion, she looks outward to a new direction, an opportunity to start again: "How 'bout a second chance?"

The Jacksonville Music Experience's #NowPlaying Picks

After toiling in the digital ether of Soundcloud for a time, 21-year-old singer-songwriter Kayla Le has emerged as Sailor Goon. Le tastefully deploys her agile and powerful voice, hurdling over the mixes of 100-meter-dash-length joints like "Josephine" and "Just For Me."

For "Persian Rugs," Le enlisted multi-instrumentalists and producers Glenn Michael Van Dyke (Boytoy) and Lena Simon (La Luz); the trio intricately knits pop, R&B and psychedelia, as Le offers a thousand-plus thread count of blunted navel-gazing ("Maybe my mind's gone / but believe my heart's with you / I'm smokin' too much / tied it to my youth") over a relentless bass vamp, minimalist drum samples and restrained atmospherics.