It was a quarter past 12 a.m. on a particularly lively Friday night when I made my way to downtown Austin. Last weekend, the second consecutive year of Levitation was in full swing and I was nothing short of ecstatic to experience a piece of the niche festival’s hypnagogic lineup. The edgy fuzz sounds of the band BRONCHO drew me to Barracuda’s outdoor stage for a moody psych-rock performance. 

Levitation 2019 was incomparable. Underground metal, electronic and rock genres, hypnotic visuals and enough secondhand smoke to hotbox multiple outdoor venues; that’s just a snapshot of the festival.

As a first-time attendee, I swiftly came to understand how Levitation found its name —  each performance was an idiosyncratic, transcendent experience. I might think the entire night had been a dream, had my ears not rang with surreal echoes for hours after I made my way home. 

A somber, lonesome feeling drifts in with the year’s first few cold fronts. It seems as though the dreary atmosphere carries a perplexing desire to seek a source of comfort. This year, Cigarettes After Sex emerged right in time, delivering misty, impassioned sounds in their most refined release yet. The cathartic dream-pop band debuted their second full-length album, Cry on Oct. 25, delivering misty, impassioned sounds in their most refined release yet.

Every direction you turn, another fall-enthusiast appears, donned in clothing that bears the unfortunate essence of Donald Trump’s face tan. Cheap, gray cobweb decorations and brown blob-shaped “pumpkin” Reese’s taunt you as a brutal reminder that 2019 has been a disappointing dark pit of dead aspirations. Your only solace is the tireless hip-hop music that hasn’t been ruined by football-savvy frat boys.

Here are eight such tracks you can blare to drown out the intensity of autumn, somewhere between looping the new Frank Ocean, coping with October 31st’s Mercury in Retrograde and the painful wait on Kanye’s Jesus is King.