Dream pop and the problem of describing what you love about it to people who haven't heard it is something every fan deals with.

The usual descriptions — "lush," "dreamy," "atmospheric" — are accurate but don't capture why someone would care. They describe what the music sounds like without describing what it does. "Atmospheric" could describe a lot of music that I don't love and that doesn't do what the best dream pop does.

The best description I've developed is something like: dream pop creates a specific quality of interior space that you inhabit for the duration of the record. It's not about the sounds themselves but about what those sounds construct — a world you can be in, a mood that persists after the music stops.

This still doesn't fully capture it, because the quality I'm describing requires the right listener and the right record and the right moment. Dream pop is one of those genres that requires a specific meeting of conditions, and when those conditions are right, nothing else sounds quite the same.