Some essential listening as the snow falls:

Salesman at the Day of the Parade – Rogue Wave
Michigan Girls – Califone
All You Do Is Talk – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Ooh La La – The Faces
Just Like A Woman (live at Royal Albert Hall ’66 version) – Bob Dylan

Gentle, easygoing, sometimes fittingly depressing sounds to compliment the season.

Radiohead – Kid A – The album as a whole conjures up sights seen from a helicopter flying over snow-swept, barren landscapes, the crisp beats join with Thom Yorke’s apocalyptic poetry to produce a perfectly compelling score to this flight. That, or I’ve seen the video for Motion Picture Soundtrack one too many times. Regardless, there is no better musical accompaniment to the visuals resulting from driving through a snowstorm, the barrage of soft flakes pummeling (or drifting past) your windshield.

Burial – Untrue – Although this is only my 2nd winter with this album, it is another bona fide frigid weather headphones classic. The eerie samples and cold, precise dubstep beats blend perfectly in creating a profoundly moving record, a triumph for a purely electronic construction. On more than one winter evening, I’ve sat alone on my porch, listening to Untrue on my iPod, ignoring the frosty feeling creeping across my skin, content as possible.

The Microphones – The Glow Pt. 2 – For many of the same reasons as listed for the Castanets above, this is a mind-blowing work of art. It’s epic scale (and length) differentiates this from FLF, and makes it a better album as a whole. Do sip on coffee or tea while listening.

Vince Guaraldi – A Charlie Brown Christmas – This needs no introduction and is not open for debate.

- Waters of March – a wonderful promise of what lies ahead of all this cold, gray misery (and if you want to get local about it, this is one of those songs that sticks in my head as being an outstanding live piece from Madison’s Pagee Go Go). This is the song that will make you start longing for those certain times of year

- Pixies – Winterlong – Only the Pixies could be so synonymous with surf-rock yet still speak so ridiculously and masterfully deeply to love lost over winter months

- The Polyphonic Spree – Days Like This Keep Me Warm – When you’ve lived in Wisconsin as long as I have, you NEED to do things like this in order to survive – listen to songs like this Spree tune during those wonderfully idyllic summer days and
subconciously store them in your mind to pull out during long cold nights like tonight

- 2Pac – California Love – Oh hey you, you got over that bullshit emo crying about winter phase? Get your ass moving NOW. You are powerless to try and keep your fat Wisconsin winter ass stationary to this song.

- Stan Bush – The Touch – Are you kidding me? There is no way in HELL you can let winter touch you after this song comes up on the playlist. I mean really, if I know you well enough, that means that you’re at your best when when the goin’ gets rough, and you’ve been put to the test, but it’s never enough. If that can’t get you through a brutal Wisconsin winter, then I don’t know what the hell will.