April Showers Bring May Flowers, the Playlist

Dear listeners,

This is Dani Blum, a health reporter and sometime music writer at The New York Times, filling in for Lindsay this week.

May is when music leaks outside, when songs start to seep out of car windows, when clusters of speakers clog parks. This always feels like a kind of benediction to me, or a reward for the long slog of murky, soggy spring.

You know the saying about the seasonal blossoming — so with that in mind, I put together a playlist focused on flowers, but also on the quiet, thrumming hope that comes this time of year. Call it post-spring, pre-summer, the sweetest form of seasonal purgatory. This playlist features songs from across the last decade, including older tracks from Lorde and Lana Del Rey — two artists whose new music I’m most excited to hear this summer — as well as an understated track from the queen of last summer, Charli XCX.

I bloom just for you,

Dani

Listen along while you read.

1. Faye Webster featuring Father: “Flowers”

The Atlanta-based indie singer Faye Webster can tell an entire story with the quake in her voice. Her vowels seem to cave in as she sings, “Can you just give me all your time?/ I’m gonna try give you mine.” It’s a simple couplet that binds the song together, equal parts pleading and reassuring.

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