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Woody Allen’s films achieve a very particular duality. Effortlessly shifting from the wound-up, neurotic jokes he makes to the deep moral conundrums his characters face, he laces his films with a balance that often resembles the actual drama and comedy of real life, for better or worse. These moments of levity and seriousness are always anchored to the films’ larger moods, which are themselves bound to his deliberate and inspired use of music. Manhattan kicks off with Gershwin’s ecstatic Rhapsody in Blue, the jazzy crescendos and woozy melodies of which set the tempo and timbre for the rest of the film. For Love and Death the director chose Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s music from Alexander Nevsky and Lieutenant Kijé, both of which lent the film a particular sense of folkiness and pomp, perfectly mediating the screenplay’s reliance on slapstick comedy and black humor. This playlist collects a number of the director’s most inspired musical selections.

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.2016 was a year of insurgent indie label artists breaking through to hip-hop radio, including Young M.A, YFN Lucci, and Chance The Rapper, whose jubilant gospel rap sound crossed over from self-released mixtapes to mainstream stardom with the help of killer guest verses by 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne on “No Problems.” Kevin Gates’s long-simmering buzz finally paid off with his first two platinum singles, the sweetly melodic “2 Phones” and the rampaging “Really Really.” Lil Yachty led the charge of a new generation of teen rappers with his breakout guest verse on D.R.A.M.’s “Broccoli.” And mainstays of radio playlists like Drake, Future, and Young Thug continued to dominate the airwaves along with post-prison comebacks from veterans Gucci Mane and Remy Ma.

Are you all year-end-listed-out at this point? Well, we regret to inform you we have one more for you. But this one looks forward instead of back, collecting the most tantalizing teasers from albums due in 2018. Hear ace new tunes from reigning chart royalty (Migos), returning mid-2000s sensations (Franz Ferdinand, The Go! Team, Fall Out Boy, MGMT), returning early-2010s sensations (Rhye, Tune-Yards), bubbling-under phenoms due to break through in a big way (Hookworms, Lucy Dacus, Rayvn Lenae, and Kyle Craft, pictured above), still-vital ‘90s veterans (Superchunk, Belle & Sebastian, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Efrim Manuel Menuck), and left-field curios who’ll soon be your new favorite bands (Texan Thai-funk fusionists Khruangbin, Tijuana shoegazers Mint Field). And cap it all off with what’s either the weirdest Jack White song yet or a messily edited audio trailer for what sounds like Jack White’s weirdest album yet. Hit play and feel the future—because 2017 is soooooo last year.

Oh, I’m tired of looking for homeAnd asking about my loved onesMy soul is woundedSo the Syrian singer Omar Souleyman cries on “Mawal,” the penultimate track off his 2017 album, To Syria, With Love. After six years of war in his home country, the man known among Westerners for his dabke jams, for his laments to heartsickness, and for his ubiquitous keffiyeh and sunglasses can hold in his feelings no longer—he misses home.The war in Syria has spurred a global refugee crisis, stoked xenophobic and Islamophobic fears across Europe and America, and prompted U.S. president Donald Trump to add the Levantine nation to his list of countries thrown onto a controversial travel ban. But Syria’s musical traditions offer a much-needed escape from the horrors of war. Indeed, as this playlist shows, there is much to explore, from honey-voiced pop stars like George Wassouf and Assala Nasri to classical and folk traditions championed today by the likes of Ibrahim Keivo and the Orchestra or Syrian Musicians (members of whom performed a much-heralded concert last year in London with Damon Albarn and other guests as part of the musical collective Africa Express).Even before the war, Syria was never given a good rep in Western media representations; talk was all about Bashar al-Assad and the “axis of evil.” But in the Middle East, this country is famed for its rich traditions of art, music, and culture. Indeed, the capital Damascus contends as one of the oldest cities in the world, while the major city of Aleppo was famed as a center for sacral chants and the poetic and musical form called mowashah, preserved for centuries among Sufi and Christian musicians. Today, the situation may be incredibly dire for millions of Syrians, but there’s still the music, helping us heal from yesterday to today.

Click here to subscribe to the Spotify playlist.In an era where singles carry the industry, and albums are just collected singles, and mixtapes are albums, TDE in 2016 approached their releases like Def Jam in 1998 — stuffing them to the gills. Each album featured the patented TDE approach of Two Songs For One, pioneered on Kendricks "Sing About Me, Im Dying of Thirst, the 12-minute capper on Good Kid, Maad City and followed by the seven-minute "Prescription/Oxymoron" on Schoolboy Qs Oxymoron. Check the track totals and album lengths this year:Ab-Soul, Do What Thou Wilt.: 16 songs, 77 minutesIsaiah Rashad, The Song’s Tirade: 17 songs, 63 minutesSchoolboy Q, Blank Face: 17 songs, 72 minutesKendrick Lamar, untitled unmastered: 8 songs, 34 minutesHaving the patience to make it past 10-12 songs in one sitting for any music fan is trying. TDEs position is its better to have more and not need it than to not have enough. Long gone are the days of GZAs philosophy of making albums "brief son, half short and twice as strong.” Blank Face would be a top 3 album if it closed with the title track, and Ab-Souls fascination with Lupe and Eminem would be better served in under 40 minutes.This would be a deterrent if not for the artists themselves choosing to eschew the pop charts they so clearly had their eyes on in the aftermath of Kendricks breakthrough Good Kid four years ago. Schoolboys Blank Face was a popcorn movie of an album, action-packed, fun, violent, and full of beloved heroes like Tha Dogg Pound, Jadakiss, and E-40. Isaiah Rashads The Suns Tirade was breezy and introspective, more than capable of soundtracking cookouts for the next 5 years. Ab-Soul doubled down on his Conspiracy Brother impulses on his third album Do What Thou Wilt, becoming the millennial Ras Kass in the process. And Kendricks untitled unmastered, while sloppy in parts, was an interesting bookend to Pimp a Butterfly — 34 minutes of outtakes and "How the hell was THAT not a single?" moments jampacked into 8 songs.This playlist is the easiest way to enjoy the high points from TDEs best overall year top to bottom without having to take on too much Netflix truther documentary talk from Ab-Soul, nihilistic glee from Schoolboy, unfinished jazzy ruminations from Kendrick, or mumble mouthed charm from Isaiah.

If the Stranger Things soundtrack has you jonesing for modern synthesizer music, then jam this playlist as soon as you’ve devoured season one. For those new to the movement, the otherworldly arpeggios and gaseous drift of composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein surely sound novel and exciting. But truth be told, synth-based exploration has been going strong for nearly a decade now. Cleveland’s Emeralds, as well as their myriad side projects, deserve the lion’s share of credit. As far back as 2008, the trio were busily transforming elements of Kosmische Musik, proto-New Age, vintage sci-fi and horror soundtracks (John Carpenter and Alan Howarth’s especially), and avant-garde electronics into a uniquely 21st-century voice. Other vital contributions have been made by Panabrite, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Tim Hecker, each one pushing these ideas into thrilling, new territory. -- Justin Farrar

The history of black experimental music is made up of musicians who were and are unapologetically proud of their African descent. They not only used their skills to create profoundly unique music — they also leveraged their connection to their heritage to uplift black American communities, as well as convey their personal frustrations with the oppressions of the pre- and post-civil right eras. This mixtape is filled with artists like Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, Betty Davis, and Funkadelic, who pushed, pulled, and broke the boundaries of what black music in America should be, yanking themselves from the mold of Motown to explore new musical territory. A small army of gifted artists followed in their footsteps, from Afrika Bambaataa to DJ Spooky, Flying Lotus to Azealia Banks.

Angel Olsens approach to rock—a little bit of folk, a little bit of fuzz, a whole lot of white-knuckle honesty—has made her one of its most exciting artists. But while the North Carolina-based crooners been at the vanguard of the indie since she first struck out on her own, the records that helped create her sound are the sorts of dusty albums that populate crate-diggers dreams. Her headiest songs are influenced by what she calls "blood harmonies," those chords that can only come from groups of vocalists who are somehow related, like The Everly Brothers, while her matter-of-fact poetry derives its influences from soul titans like Donny Hathaway and American bards like Bob Dylan.

Bleep, the moody northern English take on techno, was arguably the UK’s first homegrown take on electronic music.The origins of bleep lie in Northern English breakdancing crews. Bradford’s Solar City Rockers crew was home to both George Evelyn, who would later form Nightmares on Wax with Kevin Harper, and Unique 3, who in 1988 recorded what is generally acknowledged as the first instance of bleep: “The Theme,” a record that nailed the acidic squirts, looming sub bass, and icy synth melodies that would later define the genre. One year later, “The Theme” would be joined in the shops by Nightmares on Wax’s debut single “Dextrous” (which the group would later re-work) and Forgemasters’ ominous “Track With No Name,” the first record on Sheffield indie label Warp.Warp—now home to everyone from Aphex Twin to Flying Lotus—would make its name as a bleep label, with its iconic purple record sleeves a guarantee of steely Sheffield quality. In 1990, Warp released an astounding run of bleep records, from LFO’s hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck self-titled classic to Nightmares on Wax’s “Aftermath,” Sweet Exorcist’s “Testone,” and Tricky Disco’s eponymous hit, which bothered the higher reaches of the UK charts (annoying mainstream radio DJs considerably on the way).In the same year, Birmingham’s Network Records (Warp’s only serious competitor for the bleep crown) put out two enduring bleep classics in the form of Nexus 21’s twinkling “Self Hypnosis” and Rhythmatic’s circuit-bending “Take Me Back,” while in the US a young Roger Sanchez gave the bleep sound a New York spin on Egotrip’s Dreamworld EP and Underground Solution’s “Luv Dancin’.” DJ Moneypenny (as Chapter 1) and Bobby Konders (as Freedom Authority) were among the other American producers to catch the bleep bug, with the former’s 1990 release “Unleash The Groove” even featuring a “Love in Sheffield” remix. Meanwhile, down in Miami, Ralph Falcon and Oscar Gaetan (a.k.a. Murk/Funky Green Dogs/Intruder/Liberty City) were clearly paying attention. The duo included Nightmares on Wax’s “Dextrous” on their brilliant 1998 mix CD The House Music Movement and you can hear echoes of bleep’s spacious, sweet-and-sour ambience in songs like Liberty City’s “Some Lovin’.”In 1991, Warp released debut albums by both LFO (Frequencies) and Nightmares on Wax (A World of Science), but by 1992 bleep was definitively on the wane, as the release of Warp’s seminal Artificial Intelligence compilation saw the label move towards the kind of brainy techno that would be later known as IDM. By this point, Nightmares on Wax had also moved on, edging towards the downbeat hip-hop for which they are known today. But bleep was by no means dead. LFO would release two more albums, 1996’s Advance (including the brilliant “Tied Up”) and 2003’s Sheath (home to “Freak”), and the group’s Mark Bell would go on to work as a producer with everyone from Björk to Depeche Mode before his death in 2014.In the UK, the influence of bleep could be heard in contemporary musical genres such as rave (e.g., Altern 8’s “Infiltrate 202”) and jungle (as on A Guy Called Gerald’s “28 Gun Bad Boy”), later filtering through to UK garage (Dem 2’s “Destiny”), dubstep (Benga & Coki’s “Night”), bassline (T2’s “Heartbroken”), grime (D Double E’s “Streetfighter Riddim” or Maniac, Maxsta, and Boothroyd’s “No Retreat”), and even footwork (DJ Taye x DJ Manny’s “The Matrixx”).In many cases, the influence of bleep was more subliminal than direct, as Neil Landstrumm explained in a 2014 Resident Advisor history of bleep. “Every few years [bleep] seems to pop up,” he said. “Think of grime, sub-low, dubstep, garage, speed-garage, the new techno styles, new house… the ghosts of bleep are still in there, whether consciously or not. I doubt, for example, More Fire Crew had ever heard of bass and bleep, or many of the first wave of dubstep artists, but its there.”Elsewhere, the influence of bleep has been more overt and none more so than in the work of Neil Landstrumm himself, who has released a number of records that consciously reference bleep’s Northern sound, including his 2017 EP A Death, A Mexican And A Mormon, from which “The Tomorrow People” is taken. Doncaster’s Mella D is another producer who has taken the influence of bleep into the modern world, notably with “Movement,” from his 2017 Warehouse Music 001 EP, a song that proves the enduring appeal of bleeps, bass, and thundering beats.

Of the infinite subgenres crammed under the rock ‘n’ roll umbrella, no two feel as diametrically opposed as country-rock and glam. The former is a emblematic of authenticity, traditonalism, humility, and lonesome landscapes; the latter is the product of artifice, stardust-speckled futurism, flamboyance, and seedy inner-city alleyways. But on his two solo releases to date—2016’s Dolls of Highland and the new Full Circle Nightmare—Portland-via-Shreveport tunesmith Kyle Craft effortlessly initiates a holy communion between roots and ritz, casting his audacious, satellite-chasing voice and saucy narratives in a downhome brew of teary-eyed guitars and barrelhouse piano rolls. And he’s just the latest, most visible participant in a long conversation between these polar-opposite aesthetics.Before they became ‘70s pomp-rock icons, David Bowie and Elton John cast their vivacious voices in more rustic settings on their early records, while their peers in The Rolling Stones wallowed in southern-bordello sleaze on Exile on Main Street. And ever since, glam-loving rock acts from The Flaming Lips to Jack White to Girls have twisted heartland sounds to suit their own whimsical worldviews or, in the case of The Replacements, expressed solidarity with gender-bending outsiders. There is, of course, also a deep history of openly queer artists—from renegade troubadour Patrick Haggerty (a.k.a. Lavender Country) to doomed glitter-rock sensation Jobriath to avant-disco polymath Arthur Russell to modern-day indie acts like The Hidden Cameras and Ezra Furman—who’ve infiltrated the notoriously conservative arena of Americana, balancing sly subversion with sincere appreciation. Follow the lipstick traces into the heartland with this playlist of artists who serve up the glitz with a side of grits.