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Pitchfork Music Festival 2024: The Playlist

Welcome once again to another year of coverage for Pitchfork Music Festival here on Faronheit! Every July, we spend one week diving into the various musical aspects of the Pitchfork Music Festival lineup. This comes in multiple forms. There’s the playlist featuring every artist on the lineup, which is what always kicks off the coverage so you can hear music from every artist performing and get a better sense of what you might like and who might be worth checking out over the course of the 3-day weekend. More on that in a minute. But other coverage will include day-by-day preview guides to give a little more context to the artists and schedule matchups that can cause some serious conflicts if you know and like multiple artists performing at the same time. Then we get into the daily recaps, which deliver a lot of the play-by-play looks at exactly what happened, what songs were performed, and what crazy thing that one artist did on stage. Whether you’re going and want to learn more about this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival itself, or aren’t able to attend but would love to hear about what’s happening in Union Park from July 19-21, this coverage will provide all of that and more.

As I previously mentioned, Pitchfork Music Festival week always starts with a playlist. Two songs from every single artist on the lineup. It’s arranged by date and set time, so for example Black Duck starts things off on Friday afternoon so they are first on the playlist, while Alanis Morissette closes out the weekend on Sunday so she’s last on the playlist. If you listen in order, you’ll journey through Friday, Saturday, and Sunday over the course of about five hours. Easy peasy. Jump into it, get familiar with a bunch of artists you haven’t heard before or have only heard a song or two from. A big part of this festival is discovery of great up-and-coming artists, so get started on that process right now with the playlist below. Sadly it’s only available through Spotify, so if you prefer a different streaming service you’re out of luck. But since most everyone I know has a Spotify account, hopefully it won’t be too much of a lift. Please enjoy, and come on back tomorrow for the start of the preview guides!

faronheit’s favorite songs of 2024 but it’s only halfway thru the year

Here we are, halfway through 2024. Congratulations on making it this far. Where does the time go? Hell if I know. So there’s this tradition that right around the start of July every year, you get a playlist. 100 songs that function as sort of a capsule of the many great things released over the last 6 months. There are no rankings here, even if Spotify assigns numbers to each track in order. Rather, the way these are arranged is more by genre and vibe than anything else. Smooth transitions and similar-ish sounds abound so you don’t end up in some weird mish-mash of a rap song into a folk song into a dance song into a harder rock song. If you listen on shuffle (which I do recommend!) those sorts of shifts might happen regularly, but if you listen in order I can promise a lovely time from start to finish.

One of my favorite things about a playlist like this is it provides the opportunity to share a bunch of songs you might have missed during the first half of the year. If you’re curious about new music and enjoy a little adventure, this is the playlist for you! I can firmly promise you haven’t heard all 100 songs (yet, unless you listened before reading this), and there are plenty of baby indie artists that could use some love and a bit of discovery. There are also some big hitmakers should you enjoy Chappell Roan and Taylor Swift and Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar. One thing I might recommend is picking a song you know and then listening to two songs before and two songs after it. That’ll give you a little nudge around your comfort zone.

The only “rules” for this playlist are as follows: all songs must have been released within the first 6 months of 2024, and no artist gets more than one track in order to maximize the spread (featured artist spots are excluded from this rule). Simple enough! This playlist is available via Spotify and YouTube, because pretty much everyone can access one or the other. The individual songs will be linked on YouTube as well, in case you only want a taste. Please enjoy all 6 hours! Put it on when you’re hanging at the pool or working the grill. There will inevitably be songs I’ve missed, so hit me up on social media and let me know what I should be listening to!

The Top 100 Songs of 2023

One thing that fascinates me about year-end lists is how little true consensus there tends to be between them. It makes the moments when everyone actually IS in agreement so much more powerful, and a testament to the quality of something. Call it the Paddington 2 effect, or I suppose the Dolly Parton effect, because nobody actually dislikes either of those two things. My favorite song of 2023 falls into that “broad consensus” category. So many people and publications ranked it as their top track of the year that seeing another list fall in line like this one might induce another eye roll and a “here we go again”. But I can’t deny something that’s objectively true, as much as I’d like to be a contrarian. You’re of course more than welcome to disagree with me, along with the hundreds of other music writers who listed this as the #1 song of 2023. What’s wilder, in my mind, is how this 7+ minute track received no commercial or terrestrial radio placement, as far as I’m aware. Instead it just got a lot of organic, fully chosen plays across a variety of formats. If you know your music and have been paying close attention to year-end lists, hopefully my favorite song of 2023 won’t come as a surprise.

But for those who still aren’t sure what I’m talking about, there’s a list of 100 great songs here just waiting for your ears, stretched across a wide variety of genres and styles. A little something for everyone. The rules are relatively simple – so long as the song was released at some point in 2023, it was eligible for inclusion on this list. But also, to spread the love as much as possible, every artist and album only gets to be represented by a single track on this list. Featured guest spots do not count towards this total, which is how JPEGMAFIA, Danny Brown, and Lil Yachty all managed to show up more than once. Alternatively, even a Various Artists record like the Barbie soundtrack only gets one song to represent it. If you’ve got a problem with that, take it up with management. Otherwise, kick back and soak in the 6.5 hours of music that represent the finest tracks of 2023. The list is below, along with clickable links to hear every song on YouTube. There’s also an embedded Spotify playlist near the bottom if that’s your preference. Listen, explore, and enjoy! Cheers to the end of the year, and wishing you a great 2024 ahead!

Pitchfork Music Festival 2023: The Playlist

Welcome to what’s become an annual tradition here at Faronheit – a week’s worth of coverage surrounding Pitchfork Music Festival! For the uninitiated, Pitchfork Music Festival is a three-day music and culture extravaganza that takes place at Chicago’s Union Park. It’s a smaller festival focused on up-and-coming acts with a few legends thrown in for good measure. You show up because of the names you recognize, but you stick around because you’re just as likely to discover something new and great you’ve never heard before. It’s a whole lot of fun, and the crowds are really cool too. If you’ve never been, I strongly recommend you check it out. This year’s Pitchfork Music Festival takes place from July 21-23 aka this upcoming weekend.

For those planning to attend this year’s festival, or maybe even those who can’t make it but still want to learn a bit more about the lineup, I’m thrilled to help you prepare with a series of preview guides. The week of coverage always begins with a playlist. Reasonably speaking, that’s the best way to familiarize yourself with the lineup. Listen to a song or two from every artist set to perform, so you can gain a sense of what they sound like and the kind of energy they might bring to a festival stage.

This 84-song playlist takes a little over five hours to listen from start to finish, and includes two tracks from every artist on the lineup. The order has been determined by the festival schedule, meaning the playlist begins with Nourished By Time who kick things off on Friday afternoon and it ends with Bon Iver who wrap things up on Sunday evening. Of course if you’d prefer to mix things up and let the chips fall where they may, shuffle is always an option. Also, apologies if you prefer to use a non-Spotify platform to stream your music. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to redo this playlist for additional streaming services.

All that said, please enjoy the playlist! I hope it inspires you to check out some performances you might have otherwise skipped. Tomorrow I’ll be sharing a preview guide that digs a little further into all of the artists on the schedule for Friday, with recommendations on who you should see each hour of the day. Join me, won’t you?

Half A Degree Thru ’23

We’re officially six months into 2023, and you know what that means: time for a mid-year playlist! Feels like it’s been an exceptionally strong year for music so far, which is really heartening in a lot of ways. Not that the past couple were poor in any way, but sometimes it’s a bit of a struggle to fill an entire playlist and other times it’s a bit heartbreaking to make cuts and remove tracks because there are strict self-made “parameters” in place and you can’t go beyond them. When I say this playlist could easily have been 150 or 200 songs total, that hopefully gives you a sense of how challenging this was to assemble.

100 songs. All of them great in their own ways. You may not love every one of them because your tastes are likely different from mine, but that’s okay! There’s always some middle ground, and that’s what we’re searching for here. Are these the 100 best songs from the first half of 2023? I wouldn’t quite put that kind of label on it. They’re ordered primarily by style, so if you don’t hit the shuffle button you’ll get sections of rock, electronic, rap, pop, experimental, R&B, etc. Skip around if you’d like. Maybe find a song or artist you recognize, then listen to a song or two before and a song or two after. I may have imposed limits on what went into the playlist, but there are no limits in how you can listen to it.

You can listen to the playlist on Spotify and YouTube, plus each song can be heard individually by clicking on it below. Mostly I just hope you enjoy this, discover some new music, and maybe play it at a party or something to impress your friends.

The Top 100 Songs of 2022

It’s always tough to try and sum up an entire year of music in condensed list form. This is particularly the case when talking about songs, given the sheer number that are released. Overwhelming only begins to describe the feeling. Obviously nobody can listen to everything, and even with your best effort there will still be stuff that slips past your radar, only gets one quick distracted listen, or simply just isn’t to your particular taste. Is any Top Songs list truly comprehensive? Probably not, even if you stretch the list all the way out to some absurd number like 500. The point is, we writers, music listeners, and fans do the best we can. A list like this one is put together with the idea that maybe somebody will read it, press play on a few of these songs, and ideally discover something that will totally blow their mind. No pressure!

My sincerest hope is that even the most uninformed and laziest music listener will find plenty to enjoy within these 100 songs. There are big pop hits from Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, The 1975, Lizzo, Beyonce, and The Weeknd. Electronic gets represented well with KH, Daphni, Jamie xx, HAAi, Two Shell, and Braxe + Falcon. Indie stalwarts such as Sharon Van Etten, Fever Ray, Father John Misty, Destroyer, LCD Soundsystem, and Big Thief all make appearances too. You may also want to become acquainted with some fresh new faces like Bob Vylan, Knifeplay, Shygirl, Automatic, Folly Group, piri & tommy, and Rachika Nayar.

To qualify for inclusion on this list, the song must have either been a single or part of an album/EP released at some point during the calendar year of 2022. In an effort to spread the love around as much as possible, no artist may appear on this list more than once (featured guests on a track don’t count). While the full Top 100 Songs of 2022 list is below, if you’d like to hear the whole thing in playlist format I’ve put that together for you in order via YouTube and Spotify. You can also click on any individual song and listen to it via YouTube. Apologies to Apple Music, Tidal, and Amazon Music users…I was too lazy to assemble this playlist more than twice. However you choose to consume these songs, I hope you give them a chance and explore a bit. Test your boundaries and see where that takes you. I feel confident this list represents the year that was 2022 quite well. Enjoy!

Pitchfork Music Festival 2022: The Playlist

Welcome to the beginning of Faronheit’s annual Pitchfork Music Festival coverage! Every year, we’re proud to bring you a full week’s worth of posts dedicated exclusively to Pitchfork Music Festival. This year’s fest kicks off on Friday, July 15th, and in the days leading up to that there will be a few posts detailing the lineup, schedule, and amenities to help you get the most from your 3-day weekend.

First thing’s first though: Pitchfork has 40+ artists on the lineup every year, and given that it’s a smaller boutique music festival, there’s a good chance you won’t be familiar with every single name you see. It can be a challenge keeping up with the indie music scene! In my mind, the best way to discover and find out more about an artist or band is simply to listen to their music. Sample a couple of songs and decide if it’s for you. Maybe you’ve heard of an artist or even have listened to a track or an album in the past but don’t have an entirely clear picture of what they’re all about or how they may have evolved in recent years. Have no fear! That’s what your favorite streaming service is here for.

Rather than force you to dig around, check the lineup, do a search, and pick a song or two to listen to, much of that hard work has already been done for you with Faronheit’s Pitchfork 2022 Playlist! You’ll find a couple of tracks from every single artist on the lineup, ordered by day and scheduled time slot. So this year’s playlist begins with Arooj Aftab (Friday, 1pm) and ends with The Roots (Sunday, 8:30pm) with a whole lot of greatness in between.

One of the best things about Pitchfork is that they don’t really book any bad artists. Sure, there will almost inevitably be some artists you don’t like, but that’s more a matter of personal taste than it is generally accepted poor quality. If you’re not enjoying one artist, there’s almost always another artist playing on another stage that you might like more. If all else fails you can grab some food, check out the vendors/record fair, or simply relax in the shade for a bit.

The 2022 Pitchfork Music Festival Playlist can be found below. Please enjoy and educate yourself before this weekend’s festivities begin in Union Park!

Halfway Thru ’22: A Mid-Year Playlist

Well, we’ve officially made it six months into 2022. Congratulations? Is that a milestone worth celebrating? Even I don’t know at this point. But we’re here and might as well make the best of it. I’m not going to spend any time recapping world events or making grandiose political statements right now. That’s what social media and your local news sources are for. This site is all about music, and as such I am going to share a whole bunch of it with you right now.

Given how things have been going, I suspect you may have missed a few songs or albums these last few months. I know I have! Reasonably speaking, you’d have to be almost superhuman to hear every great song or album in a year. But I have listened to a LOT of music in the first half of 2022 and am thrilled to have collected 100 of my favorite songs into a very convenient playlist you can explore to your heart’s content.

There are giant hit songs on this thing. You want Harry Styles and Beyonce? Oh, they’re both on here. Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper? You’d better believe they’re back in excellent form. Maybe you’re more of a Florence + The Machine, Arcade Fire, or Yeah Yeah Yeahs kind of person. I’ve got you covered. Love indie darlings like Mitski and Big Thief? Obviously they’re on the playlist. But for those looking for genuine discovery, there are some sprinkles of up-and-coming artists to be found as well. May I offer up servings of girlhouse, Jane Inc., Madelline, and Folly Group for your ears? Cool, catchy tracks abound.

Please note this playlist is in no specific ranked order. I’ve arranged them largely for genre and flow, so for example you’ll get plenty of pop up top, a nice serving of rap in the midsection, and more rock-based flair towards the end. Of course you could always just listen on shuffle and see how that plays out. Anyway, at 100 songs and just over six hours in total length, this playlist should keep you busy and distracted for a while. You can play it when hanging out at home, hosting a party with friends, or simply trying to make it through a long work day. It functions well in all of those scenarios. Above all else, I hope you enjoy and feel encouraged to explore some new music outside of your traditional boundaries or bubble.

The Top 100 Songs of 2021

If you listen to enough new music in any given year, it becomes exceptionally difficult to pick your favorites once December arrives. Much of it blends together into one beautiful blur, and there’s so much to remember that sometimes you end up forgetting tracks that are truly great. Then on occasion you’ll also discover a song on somebody else’s year-end “best of” list and want to include it on your own, but it’ll either be too late to add it or you’ll be unsure of how much weight to give it because there’s no real way to tell if it hold up against something else you’ve loved for the past six months. So I guess what I’m trying to say here is that any “Best Songs of 2021” list, no matter how long or short, is imperfect. We’re all just doing the best we can with our personal tastes and fractured memories. The list below could have easily extended to more than 250 songs. It would have been many hours long and vast to the point where you’d get lost after a while and just give up on trying to listen to everything. Narrowing all of 2021 down to 100 songs may not fully encapsulate all of the music that made this year great, but at the very least it gives a nice snapshot of some amazing tracks you can enjoy and revisit whenever the mood should strike you. The best of the best. All killer, no filler. Just a whole lot of bangers, even when they’re ballads and sad folk songs. Before we begin, let me quickly run through the “rules” behind the creation of this list. First, no artist may be included on the list more than once. This is in an effort to showcase a more diverse collection of artists instead of having, say, three songs from the latest Japanese Breakfast album taking up slots that could have gone to others. Second, all songs on this list must have been released on a 2021 album/EP or as a standalone single. That’s why you won’t see any Mitski, Spoon, Charli XCX, Amber Mark, Beach House, or Big Thief on this list, even though they’ve already put out tracks from full length LPs due in 2022. Don’t worry, given their past histories I can almost guarantee they’ll end up on next year’s “best of”. And that’s it! Not sure what else I can say about this collection of songs other than I sincerely hope you enjoy them. Some may trigger fond memories, and others may introduce you to something incredible and inspiring that you’ve never heard before. It’s all pretty fantastic. One of the broader themes from my favorite tracks this year is that of healing and recovery. We’ve all been forced to face so many challenges these last few years, and it’s often felt overwhelming and detrimental to our overall health and well-being. Portions of 2021 managed to restore some semblances of normalcy, and that (often temporary) reprieve from suffering gave just enough leeway to allow some light back into our lives. So please feel free to use this list as you try to put your heart back together. Close your eyes, I’ll count to 100. Take a deep breath. Count with me. Let’s begin.

Pitchfork Music Festival 2021: The Playlist

Welcome once again to Pitchfork Music Festival week here at Faronheit! It’s always a genuine thrill to provide wall-to-wall coverage of this 3-day live music extravaganza, but especially so in 2021 following last year’s pandemic-related cancellation. Of course the pandemic is very much still happening and conditions are not ideal for tens of thousands of people to gather close together and watch performances, however vaccines and masking have greatly reduced the chance of contracting COVID-19 and even breakthrough cases are highly unlikely to result in hospitalization or death. Of course there’s also the possibility of infecting your friends and loved ones. It’s important to note that attending any large scale public event these days comes with certain risks, and before purchasing a ticket you should determine how much you’re willing to accept.

Easy Access: Friday Preview GuideSaturday Preview GuideSunday Preview Guide

100 Songs from Half of ’21

We’ve once again reached the halfway point of another year, and as such it creates a perfect opportunity to reflect on the past six months just to check in and see how things are going so far. You don’t need another recap of pandemic fatigue, vaccine distribution, and the “return to normalcy” while our democratic institutions remain in constant peril. That’s not what this site is about. Everyone is stressed out enough already, so let’s take a moment to remember the good things, like music. Oh hey, remember music? It’s that thing you can play to soundtrack your life and enhance your emotional state. The right song can turn your entire day around, for better or worse. A fond memory can be triggered by a song, or an uptempo beat can somehow make a sunny day that much brighter. Great stuff, right?

After the last 15 or so months that we’ve had, your relationship with music may have changed. Perhaps staying home without constant obligations inspired you to revisit some favorite albums or go digging for something new to expand your horizons. Then again, maybe like some other activities, listening to music just doesn’t ignite the same spark within you it once did. I absolutely get that. Live music in particular has been a constant source of joy in my life, and not attending a single concert in a year and a half left a hole no livestream could ever fill. I’m excited to get back to shows and festivals later this summer, and to share some of those experiences with you here on this site. Part of me also worries it won’t be the same or at least inflame my passions as easily as it used to.

Thankfully, the well of freshly recorded songs and albums has yet to run dry. Things weren’t looking so great for a couple of months this past spring though, as it appears a number of high profile artists chose to hold off on announcing new records until it became clear the world was reopening again and they could go out on tour. Don’t get me wrong there was still plenty of good stuff being released, you just needed to dig a little deeper some weeks to find it. When I began composing this mid-year playlist, my concern was over finding enough quality tracks to make it a worthwhile endeavor. Were there 50-100 songs from the past six months that I truly loved? I wasn’t sure, and it took a few weeks of searching through my library and checking the calendar for release dates before the answer became clear.

Below you’ll find 100 songs (6.5 hours of music) that I genuinely love from the first half of 2021, in both embedded Spotify and linked YouTube formats. They are very much all over the place in terms of genre, mood, tempo, and any other qualifier you may consider. Some great representation from Chicago’s local music scene in the mix too. As always, you’re unlikely to agree with all of my choices. I’d also be extremely surprised (and impressed) if you’ve heard all of these songs before seeing them on this playlist! For every Lorde or Lil Nas X there’s an Alicia Walter or Geese. My hope is that you’ll press play on something completely foreign to you and fall in love with it. Explore a bit! Hit shuffle and see where it takes you! Or find an artist/song you already know and like, then listen to the one in order before and after it. Everything is organized by genre/vibe and purposely not ranked, so please scroll down and give those later tracks some spins too. Enjoy and Happy Summer!

The Top 100 Songs of 2020

Selecting and ranking 100 songs as the “Best of” any given year is a fool’s errand. There’s simply too much music to choose from and the notion that any of these lists can truly encapsulate what it was like to listen to music in 2020 inevitably leaves some important things out or places too much importance on certain artists or genres. In the end it’s all subjective anyway, and what captures one person’s imagination might leave another in the cold. Plus, with so much music available there’s no way you can listen to everything. I know I’ve discovered plenty of songs and artists weeks, months, or years later, only to wish I had known about them sooner so they could’ve been included in a year-end roundup. It’s the way life goes sometimes. But that’s also the benefit of any list like this! For anyone to tell you these are songs that meant something to them in 2020 automatically elevates those tracks above your standard fare. If you’re looking to put your music listening in focus, a list like this can help to some degree.

Honestly, outside of the top 30 or so, the order of the songs in this list are somewhat arbitrary. They were ranked in large part by gut feeling, which is to say that I weighed each one and placed it into the spot that seemed most accurate. This actually could have been twice as long, given how many cuts were made to keep this whole thing manageable. It makes me think the best approach and listening experience would be to use the “shuffle” function on this Spotify playlist quite liberally. Alternatively, if you’re anti-Spotify, I’d encourage you to click around and listen to these songs in a very random way. Give each one at least 30 seconds of your time to get an idea of what it sounds like. That should be enough to determine if you’re interested in hearing more. Maybe next year I’ll get rid of the ranking system altogether. The top 100 songs should be good enough without needing to tell you if one is “better” than another.

The overall criteria for qualification on this list was pretty simple: each song must have been released as a standalone single or as part of an EP or album from 2020. No artist was allowed to appear more than once, though exceptions were made for featured guests (looking at you, Megan Thee Stallion & Ariana Grande). That opened things up a bit to enable more artists to be included and represented on this list. Some Chicago favorites too! And not to spoil any surprises, but you might not find some of these names on other “Best of” lineups so it’s just great to show them some (deserved) love. There’s so much fun and catchy stuff I can’t wait for you to discover, so take your time and please enjoy!

Six Times Twenty: 120 Great Songs From The First Half Of 2020


If you’re reading this, I’d like to congratulate you on surviving the first half of 2020. To say the past six months have been challenging would be putting it mildly. Pandemics and protests are only the start of our troubles. And even though most of us have been spending a whole lot of time at home, we could still use a break from everything. While I can’t sit here and tell you that the world will somehow magically get better and there’s light at the end of this extremely dark tunnel, my hope still remains intact that life will improve sooner rather than later.

The Top 50 Songs of 2019

It seems like every year I comment about how challenging it is to put together a “Top Songs” list, because unlike albums, which are larger works meant to be taken as a whole, songs are fractions of that whole. There are multitudes more songs in the world than albums, so in essence it’s like splitting hairs. Imagine my surprise then, when this Top 50 Songs of 2019 list came together rather easily. Perhaps there were fewer standout tracks than normal to really catch my attention. It was a slightly “off” year for music, so that might have helped too. Color me clueless as to the actual reason, because all that matters is these are 50 songs I can say without a doubt are the ones I loved and in many cases listened to most this year. My sincerest apologies if your personal favorite didn’t make the cut. Everybody has their own unique tastes, and while I’d hope most of these songs will satisfy, you might feel differently. That’s okay! The songs on this list span across nearly every genre of music and range from dancefloor bangers to depressing bops and back again. My sincerest hope is that you’ll discover something new you haven’t heard before, and may even fall in love with it as much as I have. There are really only two rules I set when composing this list:

1. Songs must appear on an album, EP, or standalone single released in 2019 (so no new Tame Impala, Grimes, The 1975, etc. from 2020 LPs).
2. Only one song per artist, to help spread the love around (featured guest vocals don’t count).

Every song on this Top 50 is accompanied by a link to stream it (and in many cases watch the video) on YouTube. There’s also a Spotify playlist embedded below, organized just like this list, from #50-1. Please enjoy, and feel free to share your own opinions or lists in the comments!

Pitchfork Music Festival 2019: The Lineup Playlist

Welcome to the start of another Pitchfork Music Festival Week here at Faronheit! There’s so much to cover over the next seven days, but the first step involves familiarizing yourself with the lineup. The diverse collection of talent that takes the stage in Chicago’s Union Park every July remains unparalleled, as the festival provides a breeding ground for tomorrow’s superstars while simultaneously paying respects to legends. Artists such as Bon Iver, The National, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend, LCD Soundsystem, Kendrick Lamar, and Chance the Rapper all performed at Pitchfork before they became household names. But you also get seasoned pros like Public Enemy, Yoko Ono, The Jesus Lizard, Guided By Voices, Pavement, A Tribe Called Quest, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Bjork, and George Clinton with Parliament Funkadelic showing up to guide everyone through their classic catalogs.

The 2019 edition of the Pitchfork Music Festival maintains a strong grasp on that dynamic, celebrating the decades of music we’ve gotten from The Isley Brothers, Mavis Staples, Belle & Sebastian, Neneh Cherry, and Stereolab while also providing an introduction to local and international names like Clairo, Black Midi, Tirzah, Lala Lala, and MIKE. It may interest you to know that the lineup is gender balanced, and makes a particular point to include a number of Chicago-based artists. If you’re planning to attend the festival this weekend but haven’t yet studied up on everyone that will be performing, what are you waiting for?

To help on your journey of discovery, I’ve assembled a playlist that you’re welcome to explore at your own discretion. The Spotify version embedded below features a pair of songs from every artist on this year’s lineup, with the exception of the Great Black Music Ensemble. They are sorted in the order they’re scheduled to perform, starting with early Friday afternoon and ending with Sunday night. As an alternate option, since not everyone has Spotify or wants to dig through an 80+ song playlist, you can also scroll through the lineup in alphabetical order and click on links to listen to individual songs from artists on YouTube. Hopefully that will satisfy just about everyone. So explore a bit. Find something new that inspires or motivates you. Then prepare to make some tough decisions when planning out your festival weekend. Speaking of which, please continue to check the site over the coming days for preview guides and advice on artists you shouldn’t miss at this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival! If you still need tickets, here’s where you can buy them. Prices increase on Tuesday 7/16, so you may want to move quickly to save a few bucks.

Friday Preview Guide
Saturday Preview Guide
Sunday Preview Guide

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