With Family Weekend landing right on Halloween, many Colgate University students have decided to celebrate a weekend early this year. With early costume preparation comes early playlist preparation. I’ve always found Halloween music to be a rather strange category — fun in the moment but, much like most holiday music, quick to lose its charm outside the season. Luckily, the eerie and foreboding feelings most often associated with this spooky time transcend seasons, for they are, more than anything, inherent aspects of the human condition. Thus, I bring you a playlist of haunting tracks that capture the atmosphere of the Halloween season and can still be enjoyed year-round!
1. “Inspiration” — Gipsy Kings (1988)
I had planned on saving the descriptor “hauntingly beautiful” for later in the playlist, but “Inspiration” left me no choice. This instrumental track in the Gipsy Kings’ signature style that blends flamenco, rumba catalana, pop and salsa is exactly that — haunting and beautiful. It makes you want to dance in a melancholic sort of way.
2. “Wicked Game” — Chris Isaak (1989)
Despite its summer release in June 1989, Chris Isaak’s magnum opus, “Wicked Game,” feels quintessentially October. Some (my mom every time I play this in the car) insist that his voice is “whiny”; others hear something heartfelt and sincere. Either way, the twanging surf-rock guitar riff from James Calvin Wilsey is what makes the song. It’s crisp and full of a nostalgic depth that belongs to the autumn months.
3. “Into Dust” — Mazzy Star (1993)
While most tracks off their legendary dream pop/folk album, “So Tonight That I Might See,” are melancholic, “Into Dust” carries a more eerie, somber weight compared to dreamier songs like “Fade Into You.” As Hope Sandoval slowly sings “I could feel my eyes turning into dust / And two strangers turning into dust,” her telling of a lost connection feels deeply tragic but real nonetheless.
4. “I Go To Sleep” — Anika (2010)
In this hollow, isolated remake of Ray Davies’ “I Go to Sleep,” Anika takes the original 1965 heartfelt piano ballad where Davies cheerfully sings, “I go to sleep and imagine that you’re there with me,” and drains it of all warmth. Her cold delivery and sharp isolation of each note make it unsettling, almost as if the song itself has depersonalized.
5. “Black Car” — Beach House (2018)
Off one of Beach House’s darker, eerier albums, “7,” “Black Car” has an edge that speaks to the night, making it the most immaculate night-driving song of all time. The layers of synths and intertwining lyrics build on one another in such an entrancing way that, as a fellow Beach House subreddit user puts it, “the whole song feels like a dark spell.”
6. “Hearing Damage” — Thom Yorke (2009)
This electro-indie track from Radiohead’s frontman Thom Yorke is effortlessly cool and otherworldly, making its placement in “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” film all the more fitting. Every time I hear it, I’m transported to the forests of Forks, Washington, majestically sprinting through the trees with vampires and werewolves. Fun fact: The Hamilton Theater is screening the entire “Twilight” saga in a five-day movie marathon from Oct. 29 to Nov. 2.
7. “Heathen” — Deafheaven (2025)
Fair warning: This song is 50% awesomeness (vibey shoegaze) and 50% sonic assault (gremlin screaming into a microphone). This is Deafheaven’s specialty, after all, as a blackgaze band that fuses shoegaze and black metal. It has a strange charm that grows on you after a while — it’s like you have to earn the chill parts.
8. “Serpentskirt” — Cocteau Twins (1996)
This Cocteau Twins track is mesmerizing, strange and winding, almost like a serpent, as the title suggests. Much like our inability to understand the hisses of cold-blooded reptiles, it’s virtually impossible to decipher the lyrics of this song — or any Cocteau Twins song, for that matter. This isn’t a matter of translation, for it’s allegedly sung in English. Alas, “Serpentskirt” remains an enigma that even Genius, the self-proclaimed keeper of lyrical truth, has failed to crack.
9. “kisses – electronic version 3” — Slowdive (2024)
In early October 2024, Slowdive fans were blessed with three new remixes of their 2023 track “kisses”: one featuring Grouper, another with Daniel Avery and this standalone gem, which I might like even more than the original. The same guitar line is kept in “electronic version 3,” but Slowdive’s usual warmth is traded for the cold hypnosis of techno.
10. “Celestica” — Crystal Castles (2010)
If the Crystal Castles discography is like a fever dream, then “Celestica” is no exception. It’s punchy, synthy and easy to get lost in Alice Glass’ atmospheric vocals. The spooky part, you ask? Besides the album cover of a little girl in a cemetery, the title of this track allegedly references a Canadian electronics company where a rumored tragedy (graphic and ill-fitting for print) occurred. But it remains just that: a rumor…
11. “Under Your Spell” — Snow Strippers (2023)
If Bladee and Crystal Castles had twins, they would be Snow Strippers. With their DIY setup, the Detroit duo blends microgenres like Eurodance, electroclash and witch house into something ethereal, digital and hypnotic — music that truly puts you under a spell. Their style is just as intriguing as their sound, earning them a place on the frontlines of the 2021 “indie sleaze” revival.
12. “Free The Frail” — JPEGMAFIA, Helena Deland (2019)
The oddest part of this track lies in its first second, when a voice whispers, “you think you know me.” It’s a warped sample traced back to wrestler Edge’s early 2000s WWE entrance theme and now a tag that JPEGMAFIA often uses. Interestingly, versions of it have also appeared in unrelated songs by Steve Lean, jev., Clayco and PXXR GVNG. It seems a disembodied, producerless tag of sorts is on the loose — a phantom producer, perhaps.
13. “Reborn” — Colin Stetson (2018)
While I lack the emotional fortitude to sit through the horror film “Hereditary,” a trusted source tells me it’s the scariest movie they’ve ever seen. I found it fitting to end this playlist with “Reborn,” which scores the film’s final scene when certain disturbing truths supposedly come to light. The song itself sounds like a grand unveiling, with woodwinds, brass and chimes that slowly intensify to some kind of revelation the viewer might soon wish they could forget… happy Halloween!
