RFP

What came first: the psych-rock revival or the need to escape your own head at seven miles per hour?

I'm three miles into this playlist and I've already categorized it five different ways. Top 5 ways to describe what's happening here: (1) neo-psychedelic garage rock for people who miss Nuggets compilations, (2) what playing Tame Impala B-sides at a desert bonfire sounds like, (3) the soundtrack to driving through Joshua Tree after a breakup, (4) stoner rock that makes you want to run instead of sink into the couch, (5) proof that reverb and fuzz pedals can solve problems therapy can't.

Night Beats, Schur, New Candys—these aren't household names, and that's exactly the point. This is the deep-catalog, late-night-at-the-record-store stuff. The kind of music that makes you feel like you discovered something, even though obviously these bands have been touring dive bars and getting written up in niche blogs for years. But let me tell you: when "Die Hard" kicks in with that swampy, reverb-drenched groove, you're not thinking about Pitchfork ratings. You're just moving.

The whole thing feels like someone raided a collection of 7-inches from labels you'd find in the back bins—Burger Records energy, Trouble In Mind Records vibes, that whole neo-psych underground that refuses to care about algorithms. Acid rock and surf rock had a kid, and that kid got really into effects pedals and existential dread. That's this playlist.

Here's what happens when you run to fifteen tracks of garage-psych: the first three songs set the tempo with that loose, hypnotic chug—"Die Hard," "New Day," "Happy Damage"—and you're locked into the rhythm before you realize it. It's not aggressive. It's not pushing you. It's just there, this sonic fog you move through. By "Heartbroken, In Disrepair" and "Mental Case," the titles are doing the emotional work while the guitars stay detached and spacey. That's the trick with psych rock—it lets you feel everything while sounding like it feels nothing.

"Tres Leches" hits at track six and suddenly there's this surf-rock shimmer cutting through the fuzz, like the sun breaking through smoke. Then "Thorns" and "Traces" pull you back into the haze. It's a playlist that breathes. Expand, contract. Hypnotize, release.

The deeper you get, the more you realize this isn't about tempo or BPM or any of that runner's playlist science. It's about texture. "Lock Stock and Barrel" and "Elevator Pitch" in the middle stretch—these are the tracks where you stop thinking about your pace and just exist inside the sound. Your legs are moving, but your brain is somewhere in the reverb trail of a Jazzmaster through a Fender Twin.

Barry would hate this playlist. Too much space rock, not enough raw punk urgency. Dick would quietly mention that Night Beats recorded their early stuff on a Tascam 388 and that you can hear the tape saturation if you listen close enough. I just know that by the time "Racetrack" comes in at track twelve, I've stopped checking my watch.

This is running music for people who don't actually like running. It's head-clearing music for people whose heads never actually clear. It's the sonic equivalent of the Lakefront Trail at dusk in October—moody, a little cold, beautiful in a way that makes you feel more alone but somehow okay with it.

What came first: the need to run away from something, or the playlist that makes running feel like floating?