Everyone has that one favorite song or album from their childhood that, when they hear it, sends them way back to "the good ol' days." I know I do (and am definitely too embarrassed to share it), but I want to talk about something a little bit different that I've experienced in the past few years: music that makes me feel nostalgic the first time I hear it.

Sometimes I hear a song, and the lyrics are just so goofy and sweet that they remind me of being a kid. Other times, the music is just so bright and washed out, the same way a childhood flashback scene in a film may have a super fuzzy, overexposed filter on it that invokes the immature sense of wonder I felt when I was younger. I'm going to share with you the six albums I've heard in recent years that have made me feel this way the strongest.

1. "Dead Cities, Red Seas, & Lost Ghosts" by M83

I'm sure most of you have heard of their 2011 album Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, or would at least recognize the album cover, thanks to the smash hit "Midnight Cities" that ruled the radio for a couple months. However, I am here to talk to you about the 2003 album that put them on the map, Dead Cities, Red Seas, & Lost Ghosts.

This album is unique because, aside from a spoken word section in the opening track, it's almost entirely instrumental. Every track is a dreamy soundscape of shoegaze-y synths and drum pads and is just a perfect example of doing more with less. When I hear a track like "Noise," with its swelling synths in the background and descending piano keys at the forefront, it makes me want to lay down and look at the sky, exactly like the album cover.

Another stand out is the closer "Beauties Can Die" which features these constantly ascending synths alongside these poignant female vocals, ascending along with them. There's a strangely icy quality to all this warmth though. It truly reminds me of the Massachusetts winters I used to experience as a kid, when I would be outside in all my snow gear, the snow had just stopped falling, and I could feel the sun start to warm my face, piercing through the white clouds.

2. "An Abundance of Strawberries" by Julia Brown

Julia Brown is, in fact, a three-piece band, led by a guy named Sam Ray (literally no one in the band is named Julia. I don't get it either). One thing I do get, however, is that they know how to make some really excellent music. Creating a subtle mix of slowcore folk, electronics, chamber pop, and a really lo-fi recording style gives it an intimate "bedroom" quality.

One thing that really makes Abundance stand out for me are the lyrics, with almost all the songs touching on these very adolescent themes of love and curiosity. Take "All Alone in Bed" for example, where backed by a heavily reverbed acoustic guitar and plunky pianos, Sam sings about a girl getting away with things without her parents finding out.

In the song "Without You" he croons "what's the point of the leaves changing colors/if I can't watch them change with you?" bringing to mind the kind of world stopping crushes I experienced in middle school in high school. You know, the kind that made you go "What if we get married?" after texting the other person for a week.

The real stand out for me though, is "Snow Day," which takes me back once again. It opens with him singing "Snow day/2005/You pick me up from school" over this fluttering drum beat, and I can't help but be reminded of the days of indoor recess at my elementary school, where I'd sit in the cubbies and play cards with my friends as the snow fell outside.

3. "Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?" by The Unicorns

The Unicorns were, sadly, a very short-lived indie pop group from Canada, and this 2003 album was their only full-length release. One of the silliest and catchiest records I've ever heard, it’s filled with songs about friendship and adventures and, of course, unicorns. A bit more interestingly though, there's this overarching theme of fearing death, and its addressed very much in the way I reacted to it as a tween, as I began to really grasp the concept.

The opening song “I Don’t Want to Die” expresses just that: the singer is afraid to die, and he’s certain it will be a plane or a car crash. He doesn’t want to die at sea, or in his sleeping bags either! It’s as if he’s just coming to terms with the idea of death, and can’t get his mind off how everything could go wrong in the world around him. A bit dismal, I know, but thinking about the uncertainty of life was kinda scary for me as a kid.

Things lighten up with a track like “Ghost Mountain” which is propelled by a quirky synth line that could have come from a toy piano and tells the story of a group of friends hiking up a mountain. After reaching the peak and setting up camp, one of the friends tells a scary story about “something dead and gory,” which ends up spooking the narrator. So much so, that the narrator pretends to have seen a ghost to get him and his friends to go home instead of staying the night on Ghost Mountain.

I think we all had that one scaredy cat friend.

However, the most endearing track of all is “Jellybones,” where the narrator is so in love with someone that it makes him incredibly nervous and shaky. These love-induced shakes are so strong that he ends up going to the doctor, who diagnoses him with “jellybones” and rushes him to the ER to get them fixed. The track closes with the mantra “but this is love so we’ll survive,” which couldn’t be truer.

Don’t let the whole “unicorn” thing turn you off though, they’re only mentioned once, and just used to play around with the idea that believing something can make it real.

4. "Jesu" by Jesu

Like the M83 album above, Jesu is a record that is about the atmosphere it creates more so than the words that are said. A friend of mine recently described this album as sounding like a beautiful skyscraper collapsing, and I don’t think he could have been more spot on.

There are, in fact, lyrics on this, and they tend to focus on the impermanence of many things, however, they’re often so buried in the mix that you'll rarely be able to make them out. That being said, the music is able to portray the emotions found in the lyrics, even without knowing you what they are.

For me, the album creates just this incredible sense of longing. Longing for simpler times, for love, for the ability to just sit there and have not a single worry in the world. The album art echoes this perfectly; a distant view out of a window as a stranger passes, walking through the melting snow.

The song “Friends are Evil” encapsulates this, starting quite heavy and sludgy, but when the singer utters the final “they remind me nothing lasts,” the drums drop out and the guitars glide into shining crescendo, building, and building until slowly fading out in a somber drone.

“Sun Day” is a blistering, shoegaze journey from front to back, with the guitars soaring more than any other track. Rather fittingly, it instills a sort of unease in me, the kind I’d feel as a kid on the final Sunday of summer or winter vacation. It’s in these moments that my heart would tell me that I had a few more hours of bliss, but in my gut, I knew my freedom was coming to an end very soon, and I wanted nothing more than just one more day.

5. "Album" by Girls

Album by the band Girls is peculiar in a couple ways. One, being that they literally just named their album Album, and the other that their name is Girls despite the band being just two guys. However, most of the songs are certainly about girls, and in some instances are named after them.

The whole record has an incredible sweetness to it, recorded all fuzzy and lo-fi with boyish vocals and shimmering, bouncy guitars. With an obvious influence from some oldies rock, but recontextualized with a punky/surfy attitude, it makes many of the songs on here sound like a never-ending trip to the beach.

Tracks like “Lust for Life” where the narrator sings “I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine… we could make a big fire every night,” and “Morning Light” which goes “Meet me in the morning light/We know it won’t last forever” remind me of the kind of high school glee you’d see in the movies. Just this overwhelming sense of joy with someone, no matter how fleeting.

Things aren’t always so successful though, and “Lauren Marie” touches on those times where your crush was just out of reach. “I might never get my arms around you but that doesn’t mean I won’t try,” he sings, holding onto the hope that things may still work out.

“Hellhole Ratrace” touches on how it can feel at the end of all the heartache, all the failing for being the “nice guy,” all the reaching out and there’s still no one to give you comfort. This track is that last ditch effort to get help from someone, as he repeats over and over “I don’t wanna cry my whole life through… so come on, come on, come on and laugh with me.” Hate to say I’ve been there before, but sometimes we all just need a friend.

6. "Skeptic Goodbye" by You Won't

Skeptic Goodbye’s first track “Three Car Garage” opens with a recording of the lead man singing as a child, tying into how the main theme of the album is about longing for your childhood and wanting to be a kid again to escape all the stresses of adulthood. The result is something often sad, endearing, but also funny.

The title track is a somber piano piece played on what sounds like an old dusty piano and performed quite sloppily on purpose to give this amateurish feel to it as if he’s learning to play it for the first time. “Ten Years Old” is about a relationship failing that the narrator had with someone he’d known since his childhood. “I wish I was ten years old!” he shouts, wanting to go back to when they were kids, and his now lost love was always happy to see him.

Perhaps my favorite track would have to be “Who Knew,” a love song in the style of a jaunty folk tune. The narrator is in love with someone who always says now is not the right time, so he goes and confesses all the things he would do to show his love to her at different ages.

He sings “If I was a cute little kid/I would show you the painting I did for you,” and later “If I was Marty McFly, I would go back to when we were nine or ten, and I’d be your best friend,” which stands as probably the most heartwarmingly cute line I’ve ever heard in a song.