MISTER BLISTER

Past Me knew something Present Me is just now understanding: blisters don't form from bad decisions—they form from good decisions repeated past the point of sanity. This playlist is fifty-one minutes of exactly that logic. "Ouch!" is right. Sun Drug's "Wildman" opens with fuzz-drenched guitars that sound like they've been marinating in reverb since 1968, and I'm three minutes in before I realize my legs are moving faster than my brain authorized. That's the trick here—the neo-psychedelic backdrop creates this altered-state momentum where miles stop feeling like measurable units and start feeling like suggestions.\n\nThe genre blend is the story. Skate punk's caffeinated aggression crashes headlong into stoner rock's sludgy hypnosis, and somehow the collision produces running fuel. The Tazers hit with garage-punk directness, then Cari Cari's "Anaana" drops in with desert-rock shimmer that makes the pavement feel less concrete and more conceptual. Southern gothic creeps in around the edges—Nico Vega's "What Do You Want" has that swampy menace underneath the distortion, like being chased through humidity by something you can't name. Battle Tapes stretches things out with "Last Resort & Spa," four minutes of trip-hop bass that shouldn't work for running but does because the psychedelic thread holds it all together. Time gets weird. Distance gets negotiable. My watch says mile four but my brain's somewhere between dimensions.\n\nThen Husky Loops drops "Tempo" and the whole experiment tightens back into focus—frantic, jerky, paranoid energy that matches the cardiovascular mutiny happening in my chest. Calva Louise, Radkey, The Belligerents—the middle stretch is all serrated edges and feedback, skate punk's refusal to sit still married to acid rock's refusal to make sense. My quads are filing formal complaints but the guitars are screeching louder. No explanations, no apologies, just chemical-grade momentum that tastes like pennies and sounds like a skateboard going down a hill covered in broken amplifiers.\n\nMile seven arrives and Atlas Wynd's "Road Less Travelled" hits exactly when my legs start suggesting we take the road that leads directly home. But Husky Loops returns with "Dead," Psychedelic Porn Crumpets unleashes "Social Candy" with four minutes of swirling, relentless psych-rock chaos, and Pink Fuzz closes with "No Sympathy"—which is accurate, because this playlist offers none. The blisters are real. The distortion's realer. Fifty-one minutes of genres that shouldn't coexist creating a running experience that probably shouldn't either, but here we are, voluntary suffering disguised as cardio, trippy soundscapes making the pain feel like someone else's problem. Ouch, indeed. Worth it, absolutely.