Likes
Things I'm into right now. Updated occasionally.
Music
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Magdalena Bay – Imaginal Disk (2024)
Synth Pop. Neo-Psychedelia.
Imaginal Disk builds a fictive universe across its songs, music videos and lore map. Unlike a concept album, there’s no overarching narrative or cast of characters though. It is worldbuilding for its own sake, anchored by great synth-pop.
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Susanne Sundfør – Ten Love Songs (2015)
Art Pop. Synth Pop.
The Magnetic Fields wrote 69 love songs; Susanne Sundfør wrote only ten. Yet those ten form one of the most creative and coherent pop albums of the 2010s.
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Oklou – Galore (2020)
Alt-Pop. Ambient Pop. Electronic.
Galore is presented as a mixtape rather than an album, a collection of modern nocturnes built on lush synths and lightly processed vocals. It contains one of my favorite songs of all time, god’s chariots.
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Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972 (2011)
Ambient. Drone.
A dark, prismatic ambient album, many of its tracks are built from organ recordings made in a large Scandinavian church, then distorted and deconstructed into droning soundscapes. Perfect soundtrack to a game of Arkham Horror.
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Tori Amos – Boys for Pele (1996)
Art Pop. Baroque Pop.
Boys for Pele is, in the best sense of the word, unhinged: a once-in-a-generation pianist plugging a harpsichord into an amplifier and wrestling with the demons of her past.
Movies
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La Jetée
Chris Marker, 1962.
A 30-minute photo montage about a man searching for an image from his childhood. One of the best short films I’ve ever seen.
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The Florida Project
Sean Baker, 2017.
A deeply moving portrait of childhood following a group of young kids in Florida over summer break. It reminded me what childhood felt like.
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Coherence
James Ward Byrkit , 2014.
A very fun low-budget sci-fi movie set at a dinner party. Read nothing about it and go in blind.
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Train Dreams
Clint Bentley, 2025.
Train Dreams is a gentle, emotional portrait of a woodworker’s life in the Pacific Northwest around the turn of the 20th century. Its old-growth forests are more than a backdrop, shaping a movie about time and loss.
Games
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Slay the Spire 2
Roguelike. Deck-Builder.
I am a big fan of the first Slay the Spire and the second iteration improves on the formula in a lot of ways. The added Coop mode which was pioneered by the board game is a nice addition to the game, as are the act variations and the compression of ascension levels.
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Deadlock
Hero Shooter. Moba.
I’m grateful I didn’t get into MOBAs until recently. A game like Deadlock would have been dangerous to my younger self, who had fewer responsibilities and a lot more free time.
Even in its invite-only alpha, Deadlock is one of the more interesting online multiplayer games around right now. Its blend of movement shooter and MOBA feels genuinely new.
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Hollow Knight: Silksong
Metroidvania.
I bounced off Hollow Knight the first time I played it and didn’t think much of it after that. But it kept coming up often enough in my circles that I eventually gave it another try, and this time it completely clicked. Few games have hooked me the way Hollow Knight did.
Silksong feels like a bigger, busier follow-up with more of what worked for me in Hollow Knight, along with some of the same frustrations. Even so, I had a great time with it, especially its soundtrack, and I’m curious to see where the expansions take it.
TV Shows
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The Good Place
2016-2020
There’s not much I can say about The Good Place without spoiling it. It begins as a series about a flawed woman navigating the afterlife, but it quickly becomes something bigger: very funny, philosophically curious, and surprisingly moving. And it sticks the landing with a fantastic ending.
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Arcane
2021-2024
I’ve never played League of Legends, so I came to Arcane as an outsider. It never felt like a barrier. The series stands firmly on its own through its beautiful animation and its story of two sisters and the people around them, all bound together from childhood as a larger plot unfolds around them. More than anything, it’s about bonds forged early in life.
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Arrested Development
2003-2006
The “reboot” seasons (4 & 5) do not exist. The rest is the funniest sitcom I watched. There’s always money in the banana stand.
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The Pitt
2025-
Each season of The Pitt portrays one shift in the emergency department of a hospital in Pittsburgh. Even though the series anchors around the day-to-day work done in the ER, what makes it click are the little glimpses of personal lifes that happen between cases.
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The Wire
2002-2008
The Wire is my longest standing recommendation on this list. There is something about the way it portrays its protagonists and the city of Baltimore it plays in that make this show stand out from similar crime shows. Season 4 is a masterpiece.