Dream pop and the artists who work best in a particular season is a real phenomenon worth taking seriously.

I've kept rough notes about my listening patterns for a few years and the seasonal clustering around certain genres is striking. Dream pop peaks in my listening in late autumn and early winter — specifically the period when the light changes and the days get short. I'm not sure if this is about the music itself or about the emotional state the season produces, but the correlation is strong enough that I trust it.

The records that fall into this category most clearly are the ones that deal in a certain quality of cool, melancholy longing — not sadness exactly, more like the feeling of watching something end. Beach House's entire catalog. A specific run of Grouper records. Certain tracks by artists I couldn't quite call dream pop but that live in the same emotional register.

Do you have seasonal listening patterns? And what's the genre that most reliably maps onto a specific time of year for you?