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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.

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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.

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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?"

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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.

When 100 gecs' self-titled EP was released in 2017, its hyperpop sound felt insular – there was an alluring insider quality to it, a queer-oriented "if you know you know" magic that gained the group a cult-ish following. Four years and one debut album later, Laura Les and Dylan Brady have crossed over into the mainstream, gaining a feverish and dedicated fanbase, not to mention co-signs by Charli XCX, 3OH!3, Fall Out Boy and more.

Les and Brady love nu-metal as much as they do ska, as much as they do chiptune. Their songs are sonic blenders that scratch an itch deep in the brains of the eclectic listener. It's fitting, then, that their lead single for 10000 gecs, "mememe," starts with their signature windup: "Gec, back once again." As if it was a hodgepodge of their greatest hits, the track includes gec staples like an overblown chorus, Brady's vocals stretched to the maximums of AutoTune (Les' voice is more natural here, a welcome turn), MySpace-worthy melodrama and a melody with maximum replay potential – "mememe" is even backed by ska guitar (see: "stupid horse"). 100 gecs has always had the potential to reach their freaky arms out and welcome listeners to stadiums, dance floors, and mosh pits alike; "mememe" recognizes the duo's transfixing power to do so, with a supercharged confidence.

There are so many standout tracks on Adele's fourth studio album 30, but her track "To Be Loved" is the vocalist at her absolute best. Lyrically the song is a sister to the album's "Easy On Me," echoing similar motifs about being too young to have made certain decisions. But where "Easy On Me" is timid, afraid of moving on, "To Be Loved" is a song about unbridled bravery in making the leap towards better days.

Adele's voice is really at its best on this track. This is the song that demonstrates why the singer is your favorite vocalist's favorite vocalist. She's mastered a stunning chest belt that flows seamlessly between vibrato, vocal growls, and dynamics to convey an emotionality that could move even the coldest cynic. She begins the song with a potent, unashamed piano line over which she discusses her previous reservations about falling in love. As she moves through the song, the lyrics become a hymn of her surety in her decision to love again, and Adele's voice overflows into a sanguine, booming forte.

"Let it be known, known, known, that I will choose, I will lose," she sings at the song's very end, with a redemptive passion that feels like it has the power to heal all her old wounds. "It's a sacrifice, but I can't live a lie ... Let it be known, that I tried." The song's end feels more like a prayer to herself than anything else.

As a trans person, I liken my ever-changing relationship with gender to playing a video game. It's enjoyable, but it also feels like I'm progressing forward towards an indistinguishable end goal, with levels, checkpoints, blockers, and even villains crossing my path. To me, this is an experience that makes perfect sense, but the full metaphor never crossed my mind until hearing KIRARA's "HRT," a nearly seven-minute electronic number.

The song immediately evokes the chiptune sensibility of early arcade soundtracks — it's bright and directly digital. While electronic music tends to look towards the future, KIRARA looks backwards, using sounds that evoke the childlike wonder of squaring up in a boss level against an unspecified bully. She plays with the concept of the aforementioned trans experience being a video game, straight down to the name of the song: "HRT," or for the unfamiliar, hormone replacement therapy. Loosely translated from her artist statement on the song, she states that "changing the mood to one extreme or another [through the genre] is also an expression of the mood swings experienced during hormone therapy." As the song jumps from bouncy arpeggios to half-time 8-bit guitar and back again, it's clear that for those of us who can relate, it's a perfect representation of what it means to navigate the game-like minefields of your lived experience.

I felt euphoric when I left the movie theater after seeing C'mon C'mon, eager to tell more stories through my favorite medium of sound. Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National wrote a stunningly melodic score to accompany the moving family drama (with a guest billing from public radio's own Molly Webster). In the film, Joaquin Phoenix's character asks kids to answer the question: "What do you think the future is going to be like?" The Dessners' mesmerizing instrumental "I Won't Remember?" makes me want to close my eyes and take a deep breath as the sounds of the synths and clarinets wash over me.

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You don't simply listen to Sweeping Promises — you move, you groove, you strike a pose with an effortlessly cool 'tude. The post-punk band's Hunger for a Way Out was released in the middle of lockdown, but every song was made for punk-packed dance parties.

"Pain Without a Touch," a one-off single co-released by Richmond's Feel It Records and Sub Pop (the band's new worldwide label), retains all the elements that made the 2020 debut pop: a hard-picked punk bass line, crisp drumming and Caufield Schnug's sparse-yet-splashy guitar work as Lira Mondal belts over a mono mix with an audible mile-wide smile. But what the duo's learned in a short year (and across several different bands together) is structural drama; even as "Pain Without a Touch" pulses with incessant ecstasy, Mondal mixes her powerful vibrato with percussive sighs and, after a brief guitar solo, gets a lil' bit softer now (a la "Shout") to punctuate "some type of new invention / To ease up off this tension." It's a subtle reinvention, but redoubles Sweeping Promises' exuberant energy.

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"It's only gotten worse!" What better way to bellow our collective angst about the still-very-much-in-progress pandemic than with screamo? Overo's title track contribution to Another Year in Hell — a 4-way split featuring Punch On!, Zochor and Coma Regalia — is an exasperated thrust into Zoom-fatigued abyss. The Houston band features members from Perfect Future and Football, etc. in a '90s post-hardcore mode somewhere between I Hate Myself and Rainer Maria: chugging riffs and hoarse yelps in tandem with twinkly arpeggios and pop-punky vocal hooks. In just a couple years, Overo's quickly nestled into a nostalgic screamo sound, but "Another Year in Hell" is a great example of how dynamic personalities can reinvigorate memory. Case in point: the accompanying video, a tongue-in-cheek slideshow presentation graphing the rise of false screamo, egg punk's market saturation over chain punk and the ultimate screamo formula: riff, noodly bit, riff, scream, breakdown, repeat.

Slayyyter has a knack for capturing the essence of 2000's nostalgia and all of its related aesthetic idiosyncrasies. Whether it's the Britney-esque earworm potential of her collaborations with Ayesha Erotica or the clear Kylie Minogue inspiration on her debut studio album, Troubled Paradise, her songs invoke the past while glitching their way into the future. On the new track, "Stupid Boy," Slayyyter turns her sensibility towards stadium-filler jock jams. Alongside the queen of bounce, Big Freedia, the two tear up the EDM-inspired track, blowing through their verses with aplomb and disparaging the himbo agenda once and for all.

Toronto's Elise LeGrow had a major hit on Canadian radio nearly a decade ago — "No Good Woman" — but it was 2018's marvelous covers album, Playing Chess, that completely recalibrated her trajectory. On the new single "Feel Alright," LeGrow's smoky and soulful delivery is set to a driving pop arrangement, with an added punch of horns that lend a retro sensibility, harkening back to her earlier work mining classic gems from the Chess Records archives.

"Feel Alright" showcases her confidence and attitude as a singer, teetering on the edge of rasp and growl while thoroughly maintaining control. Working with producer Neff-U, there are some moments here that bring to mind Mark Ronson's work with Amy Winehouse fifteen years ago, on Back To Black. Just in time for windows-up season, this is a volume-at-11 jam, a sweet goodbye to the baggage of the past and a full embrace of the present moment.