I recently picked up My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, a collection of short stories revolving around love. But included are not bubblegum pop stories filled with victory and fields of roses. No, Jeffrey Eugenides felt it prudent to fill the pages with the sort of love stories that “give love a bad name”; that are best read alone in bed whilst letting “everybody else suffer”.

Now I hope you understand the impetus behind this naked mix, even if all of the songs were chosen before I knew the book existed.

Nana Grizol - Tamborine N Thyme - This is the sound of that first high school dance, when you stood off to the side with your friends, conversing listlessly as the whole group tried to hide any enthusiasm over being at school on a Friday night, except you could hardly pay attention as your eyes kept falling on the girl off in the corner, the one you fell in love with instantly back in seventh grade, whose hand you have been building up courage to ask for, but no matter how smoothly the saxophone played in your head, sometimes the words just came out wrong.

Okay - My - “More than you know, more than I can show, it’s my heart you got” croons Marty Anderson on the opening track from the new album, Huggable Dust. Due out on May 20, “My” is such a perfect, moving piece of psychedelic pop. Somehow, even with the instruments piling on top of each other, Anderson manages to piece together a song with a sound as simple as its emotion is deep.

Aimee Mann - Little Tornado - Dan Beirne described Aimee Mann’s voice as “like a prayer probably sounds, like, a real one,” and there is little more than I can add to that. “Little Tornado” is her sitting alone in the desert at night, softly beseeching the gods. Lightning crashes in the distance, and for a moment you can hear the gods rumbling in the background, but then the sky dies back down as Mann whistles a closing lullaby.

Constantines - Time Can Be Overcome - Much of the Constantines’ first releases could be compared to sitting behind a camera and panning over a scene of ripped furniture, drug addicts, and party monsters as the first light of morning rips through the many holes in the window shades. And so it is with great surprise, trepidation, and eagerness that I am passing along “Time Can Be Overcome”, a slow tribute to maturity and regret that throws away all the speed without sacrificing any of the grit.

Constantines and Feist - Islands in the Stream - The best covers are those that reveal a new layer in a song, and this is one of those. The Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers original was too saccharine to ever convince me of any real emotion, but Steve Lambke and Leslie Feist spew chemistry. Imagine Michael Cera and Ellen Page singing to each other at the end of Juno, except they are sitting on a broken sidewalk outside a run-down diner a few hours before sunrise, tired, but strong enough together to not give into the cold insensitivity of the city at night.

of Montreal - Feminine Effects - Kevin Barnes is a surprising man. By day he fronts a band responsible music that is sort of like attending a carnival on acid, but by night he is creating songs like this. Songs like the south; like hard rain; dry porches; old rocking chairs.

Micah P. Hinson - The Leading Guy

And he had moved on to god knows where
And he had moved on none of us care
And he had moved on to god knows where
And he had moved on none of us care

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