Burn Down the Snow

Winter music, when it’s actually good, doesn’t want to make you feel cozy. It wants to make you feel awake to the cold—that specific alertness that comes with short days and the particular silence of frozen ground at night. The Dresden Dolls understand this. Bat for Lashes understands this. Lykke Li, whose voice has always sounded like it’s arriving from the far end of some private grief, absolutely understands this.

The first snow had already fallen by the time I put this mixtape together. Temperature dropping by the hour, the light going around four in the afternoon. Not Christmas music—I want to be clear about that distinction. Christmas music is about warmth and togetherness and managed sentiment. This was for the other part of winter: the stillness, the solitude that’s either peaceful or crushing depending on where you’re standing, the way cold air makes everything feel slightly weightier than it needs to be.

Amanda Palmer’s theatrical intensity on a Dresden Dolls record sits perfectly in that register—the way the best songs manage to be genuinely funny and genuinely sad at the same time, which is a harder trick than it sounds. Natasha Khan as Bat for Lashes builds sound like weather systems, everything slow and elemental, Two Suns having dropped that spring and still sounding like it was made specifically for November. And Lykke Li’s Youth Novels had this quality of making solitude feel chosen rather than imposed, which is exactly the lie you need when the days get short.

Volume up. Clothes optional. Some of this is for crying alone, some of it is better with another person nearby, and some of it—I won’t be coy—is genuinely excellent for other things entirely when it’s minus five outside and you have nowhere else to be. The season provides context. The music provides permission.