What’s your go-to “the weather is getting warm” album?

I first discovered Kurt Vile in August of 2018 when I had just moved to—and still believed in the promise of—Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Nothing made me feel cooler or more in tune with my new neighborhood than long walks among the street art and warehouses with Vile’s warm guitar and meandering vocals looping on my (still wired!) earbuds. While I’ve since moved away and grown a lot more disillusioned with that whole milieu (as everyone who lives in Williamsburg eventually does), Wakin On A Pretty Daze still immediately brings me back to a sense of wide-eyed wonder and unfettered hope that I really crave after the long winter months. Even though the album features tracks with names like “Pure Pain,” “Too Hard,” and “Snowflakes Are Dancing,” to me it will always be hazy days, white wine on a friend-of-a-friend’s roof, joints on the fire escape, thrift store finds, and lazy afternoons. It’s an album to lose yourself in and one that feels at this point like an old friend. I only dust it off the first few months of spring so it never loses that sun-dappled magic. [Emma Keates]