This playlist exists because you never actually went. That summer abroad you planned junior year—Berlin, Vienna, maybe Prague if the rail pass stretched—became a tab you kept open for three years before finally closing it. The bands here are your counterfactual life: the European indie scene you would've discovered in sweaty Kreuzberg clubs, the Berlin jangle-pop you would've name-dropped at parties, the Vienna post-punk you would've insisted was "actually more authentic" than anything happening in Brooklyn.
Hearts Hearts opens with that Deutsche Welle jangle, all shimmer and bite. Gurr follows with the kind of confident swagger that makes you believe hot summers actually exist north of the Alps. This is the warm-up that promises transformation, the first two drinks that make running feel like possibility instead of punishment. You're twenty-two again, hypothetically.
Then Goat Girl's South London sneer cuts through the fantasy. "The Man" isn't here to comfort you—it's here to remind you that Europe isn't your escape hatch, just a different location for the same problems. Friedberg's "BOOM" drives that point home with relentless forward motion. The charm wears off. Urgency takes over. Your legs remember they're doing actual work.
DIVES arrives at the exact moment your brain starts negotiating. "Tomorrow" is every plan that became next month, then next year, then never. The track is hypnotic, almost narcotic—that European remove you mistake for sophistication when it's really just another form of avoidance. You're running in place. The irony isn't lost.
Then My Ugly Clementine kicks the door down. "Never Be Yours" is Vienna's answer to riot grrrl, all dissonant angles and refusal. At minute twenty-three when quitting sounds reasonable, this track doesn't motivate—it refuses compromise. The guitars won't resolve. The vocals sneer and soar simultaneously. It's PJ Harvey filtered through Sonic Youth's noise sensibility, that specifically European aggression that makes American indie rock feel polite. This is the moment the playlist earns its keep.
Gurr returns with "Bye Bye," and the title does the work: the goodbye you should've said to that whole fantasy three years ago. Steaming Satellites smooths it out with Munich polish, that expensive studio sheen that Berlin bands pretend to hate but secretly envy. It's the emotional cooldown, the part where you admit Europe wouldn't have fixed anything anyway.
Good Wilson closes with "Divine," and here's the joke: they're Dutch, not German. You couldn't even get the geography right in your own fantasy. The track is dreamy, hypnotic, unresolved. You finish exactly where you started—still here, still running, still pretending the next playlist will finally be the one that changes everything. Thirty-one minutes. The motherland you invented because the real one required a passport and commitment.
