Melissa Kacar

just one more day! is a curated playlist I created to celebrate the first day of spring, featuring songs on my current rotation and the ones I always find myself returning to this time of year.  The title is inspired by the chorus of Djo's "Charlie's Garden" , the unbridled joy that runs through that song and the wistful lyricism feel so perfect for the start of the season. The Crux  as a whole really captures the feelings of spring in the way that every song embodies a bright sense of optimism and renewal that comes with stepping into a new stage of the year. That album is featured prominently throughout the playlist for that reason, and sonically served as a major influence surrounding the rest of the songs I chose.  The motifs of new beginnings and fresh starts are woven throughout the rest of the playlist as well. Spring is a particularly inspiring season for me and every year I tend to gravitate toward music that reflects that energy too. Other artists prominent...

The closing track of Addison Rae 's self-titled debut album , "Headphones On" perfectly encapsulates the emotional arc of the entire project.  "Guess I gotta accept the pain, need a cigarette to make me feel better, every good thing comes my way, so I still get dolled up" she sings in the opening verse and chorus. It provokes a bittersweet sense of optimism, in a way that embraces the broken and the beautiful parts of who we are equally.  The sadness, the insecurities, the pressure, the ache for something more is all laid bare. Above all though, "Headphones On" is a reminder to embrace every high and low, learning to dance in the rain and keep persisting even when it feels hard to. "Every good thing comes my way" feels like such an important mantra to carry throughout life, to hold onto the belief that something better is just around the corner. This song is Addison at her most reflective, grounding the album in the one thing that's bee...

"Stateside" blends such a fun, infectious mix of Euro‑dance and electronic influences. PinkPantheress worked with The Dare for the first time on the production, and I love seeing her collaborate with artists who push her sound in new directions like this. The energy of the song is incredible, and the lyrics are just so cute and playful. She has such a distinct voice in pop music that is so unique and instantly recognizable, and "Stateside" really highlights that. The song itself is a cheeky recollection of falling for an American guy, and all the longing and excitement that comes with it. "You could be my American, ha, ha, ha, ha," she sings in the chorus. She has talked many times about how this is her personal favorite track from her sophomore mixtape, Fancy That , feeling like it really explored her growth as an artist. It is overall such a clever piece of pop writing, infused with garage and Y2K influences from some of the great UK pop stars who cam...

"White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter" by Lana Del Rey Whoopsie daisy yoo-hoo! Lana Del Rey is back with a new single off her upcoming album Stove , and it already feels like an instant classic in her catalog. She embodies a sound and style that's unmistakably unique, blending an enchanting Southern‑Gothic, witchy‑princess vibe - a description that's incredibly specific, but really does captures the tone of the song so well. It feels unlike anything she, or anyone else, has ever made before, and it reflects the new stage of life that's inspiring this era of her work. There's a special charm running through the entire song, serving as the strongest reminder (if anyone needed one) of what an artistic force she is and always has been. Lana creates music that is so singular to her vision; no matter how abstract the idea might seem on paper, she pulls it off with an effortlessness that only she can capture. "Funny Mouth" by Charli xcx Charli xcx 's Wut...

With The 1975 's sophomore album, I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it , the band stepped into a bright, post-modern pop world. They stripped away the black‑and‑white aesthetic that defined their self‑titled debut era three years prior and moved into something even more vivid and expansive. The hazy, neon-lit aesthetics mirrored the artistic ideals that made up their early work, but refined through an even more ambitious and broader lens.  "I think, as an idea, the conviction that it took to stand by that as an album title is very representative of what the album is like. It's quite bold and unafraid to be sentimental and dramatic and overly romantic," Matty Healy told  NME  in a 2016 interview. "It kind of captures the narrative of our psyche over the past year and a half, which is something like a lot of people who come off a big upward trajectory of success. It's quite a dynamic time, and I think that it's expansive...