So one thing I’ve gotten into over the last few years is making a song-a-day mix. I got the idea from ex-MTV host Dave Holmes, and all you do is pick one song each day… something you hear, something you think of, something tied to an event/news item/personal milestone, etc. and you just keep building over 365. At the end of each year (or each month, even) not only do you have a sweet - and often very random! - mix but afterwards you can look back on it and re-live the time… be it “oh yeah, that’s the day I watched ____” or “I was out at my local and this song just hit the moment perfectly!” Just sharing in case anyone here wants to give it a go moving forward! Or maybe you do it too? If anyone is interested, here’s how my year started (and, yes, thank you @John Richards for more than a couple of these!) https://music.apple.com/ca/playlist/01-january-2026/pl.u-b3b84WNUbAvLP https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6LhKcbjOy0CkY4mJFazeCT

It's been a hot minute. But here's the scenario: You're on call - and the call has come in. You need to fill in for your favorite morning show DJ. They're off on an adventure. Or something. Doesn't matter. What's important is that you've got scant few minutes to pick the intro song to your whole set. No judgement, no wrong answers, and obviously you will choose different tracks at different moments, but this is about right now - What's your first track? I'll go first. Right now, my intro track is Valdimar playing Yfirgefinn on a KEXP live set from Iceland. A little Cure mixed with a little Oingo Boingo. kinda. If you know you know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s98OFm_USBM

So here’s a thing I started doing with a buddy, inspired by KEXP’s Six Degrees… Just pick a friend and then you send each other one song every other day that has some tie to the last one you were sent. We don’t play with any hard & fast rules, other than it can’t be the same main artist you were sent. A fun time kill and a way to tell a friend they’re not alone. It’s not a contest, you’re just playing catch.

Here's my top 25 streams for 2026. Seattle's Korean math-rock band Plash finishing in the top spot. Impressive debut for a very talented band. Top merch item goes to Remember Sports for making a refrigerator magnet for their album "The Refrigerator" that simply says "Refrigerator" on it. Special Award to Sincere Engineer for finishing in 18th place with an album that released just days ago.

Is there any website or other service that has music listings? There was an in-store at Subpop that I missed - I didn't know Subpop was doing in-stores. Is it all Instagram now? Is there a live show aggregator?