The show opens up with a celebration of reggae and dub on a beautiful day from Bob Marley & The Wailers, Lee “Scratch” Perry and King Tubby, before going on a sonic adventure with James Blake, Nilüfer Yanya, Curtis Mayfield, Gil Scott-Heron and MF DOOM.

Newer releases from Olivia Dean, The Marías, The Bug Club and Kurt Vile bring us home in the closing mix.

Check the playlist below and listen to the episode for two weeks after it airs using the player above.

In The Groove with Ryan Patrick Hooper playlist for October 13, 2026

• “No Woman, No Cry” — Bob Marley & The Wailers
• “Tom Drunk” — Hopeton Lewis
• “Tears of a Clown” — The Chosen Few
• “Cloud Nine” — Carl Dawkins, Lee “Scratch” Perry & The Upsetters
• “Take Five” — King Tubby
• “Love and Happiness” — Monty Alexander
• “Ice Cream (feat. Matias Aguayo)” — Battles
• “Rice” — Young Fathers
• “Sometime / Someplace” — Cornelius
• “Meu Amor” — Julio Secchin & Maria Luiza Jobim
• “Bye Bye Papaye (Lexx Mix)” — Antena
• “I Had a Dream She Took My Hand” — James Blake
• “A Couple Minutes (A COLORS SHOW)” — Olivia Dean
• “Bless the Telephone” — Labi Siffre
• “OSAKA” — Athletic Progression
• “Rising Son” — Takuya Kuroda
• “Kneel” — Nilüfer Yanya
• “Midnight Sun (King Krule Remix)” — Nilüfer Yanya & King Krule
• “Life Has Its Trials” — Dorothy Ashby
• “T.R.O.Y.” — Heroes Of Limbo
• “Little Child Runnin’ Wild” — Curtis Mayfield
• “Life Is Beautiful” — Larry June, 2 Chainz & The Alchemist
• “We Almost Lost Detroit (Live)” — Gil Scott-Heron
• “Make You Feel That Way” — Blackalicious
• “Doomsday (Instrumental)” — MF DOOM
• “A Place to Go” — DJ Day
• “Nobody New” — The Marías
• “Una Mañana” — Caramelo Haze
• “Be Thankful For What You’ve Got (Live)” — Orgone
• “See – Line Woman (feat. Dominique Fils-Aimé) [120bpm]” — Atjazz
• “Can’t Do Without You” — Caribou
• “Charmed” — Σtella & Redinho
• “Ann Wants to Dance” — Papooz
• “Jealous Boy” — The Bug Club
• “Julie’s Place” — Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever
• “Zoom 97” — Kurt Vile
• “Too Many People (Remastered 2012)” — Paul & Linda McCartney
• “Can You Get To That” — Funkadelic

Listen to In the Groove with host Ryan Patrick Hooper weekdays from noon-3 p.m. ET on 101.9 WDET or stream on-demand at wdet.org.

This holiday weekend in Big Sonic Heaven, we featured another brand-new single from Echo and the Bunnymen along with a new one from Simple Minds. We featured the brand-new dreamy shoegazey single from Dottie and the latest from Hannes Kretzer out of Berlin, a track that builds into a beautiful wall of sound.

We also revisited some great new tracks from Trentemøller, BlauDisS &Tilly, plus some of your favorite shoegaze, dreampop, and post-punk classics. 

View the playlist below and listen to the show recording above for up to two weeks after it airs.

Big Sonic Heaven playlist for Sept. 6, 2026

• “Just One Kiss” – The Cure
• “Just Drive” – Postiljonen
• “Feels Like Summer” – Sing-Sing
• “Love’s Easy Tears” – Cocteau Twins
• “Take Me By The Hand” – Echo & The Bunnymen
• “All the Way” – New Order
• “Surely I Can’t Wait” – Nation of Language
• “Texture” – Catherine Wheel
• “Saudade” – This Love Is Deadly
• “Blister Sunrise” – M83
• “Don’t Fall” – The Chameleons
• “Your Lips, My Mouth” – Airiel
• “Reality” – Poison Girl Friend & Sigh Society
• “Catch The Breeze” – Slowdive
• “lakes” – she’s green
• “Terrified” – Trentemøller
• “Not Me” – This Mortal Coil
• “Beginner Boys” – Simple Minds
• “Black Sun” – Dead Can Dance
• “little galaxy” – Silk Daisys
• “Don’t You Go (feat. Dominic Appleton)” – Stefano Guzzetti
• “You & them & missing” – BlauDisS, &Tilly
• “Higher Love” – Depeche Mode
• “Veil” – Violet Oscillation
• “Memories and the Sky” – Goodbye Ranger
• “Sorry For Laughing” – Propaganda
• “The Big Shake” – The Mary Onettes
• “Devotion & Decay” – Hannes Kretzer
• “Red Shoes” – Throwing Muses
• “doll” – dottie
• “Kiss of Snow feat. Krissy VanderWoude” – LongingSky
• “Thoughtforms” – Lush
• “Goodbye Vista” – Deserta
• “Distraction” – Beachy Head
• “Blood Spilled” – Blonde Redhead
• “Fall Apart” – Ellis
• “Stumble And Fall” – Clan Of Xymox
• “Delicious Demon”-Sugarcubes

“Has it ever been easier to complain publicly about something without trying to change it?”

That’s one of the credos that Panda Bear and Sonic Boom have adopted for the upcoming release of their second collaborative album, “A ? of When,” which came out July 10 via Domino.

It’s a fist-waving-in-the-air against strictly online culture, where a lot of context gets lost. And a lot of musical memory is so brief that it’s easy to feel defeated as an artist.

So it makes sense that, like a lot of musicians, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom are struggling with how to release an album in the digital age. Fair enough. You spend all this time writing and pouring yourself into something. You release it. The internet gobbles it up in mere minutes. The cycle moves on. Did you even release an album? There’s already something else coming down the pipeline…

That’s where a sense of physicality comes in—a physical release like an actual piece of vinyl you’ve got to buy at the store. And, in the case of Panda Bear and Sonic Boom’s upcoming album, you can’t even stream this thing online if you wanted to. They’ve made the choice to keep it off of streaming services and to make a bit of an in-real-life-only event. 

All the concern about battling internet release schedules and creating a tangible, physical release also means the title track, “A ? of When (Ultimate Drive Time Mix),” sounds like the full-throated rock and pop records of the late 1960s and 1970s. 

There are elements of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, mostly due to Panda Bear’s uncanny vocals that remind me so much of Wilson. Massive guitars call back to Pete Townshend’s best and biggest work with The Who. Plus, the “Ultimate Drive Time Mix” edit actually takes out the sirens and some of the background clutter from the original version that makes it more suitable for actual radio play – talk about nostalgia!

There’s a throwback sound to the whole affair that makes as much a battle against streaming services as it is a throwback time machine to making music sound a lot like it did back in the day when you had to get up and buy the record and sit and listen to the whole damn thing in your bedroom while reading the liner notes.

And I’ll do just that.

This article was originally published on Midbrow. 

We featured lots of new music for you in Big Sonic Heaven tonight including two Shoegaze singles, one from Canada’s Prepare My Glider, featuring Gouachepaint on vocals, and another from Swedish band Kallsup. We’ll also heard the lovely cinematic dreampop of Flower Face out of Montreal, along with another new Echo and the Bunnymen track.

Plus, from Italy, Steffano Guzetti’s 4AD-inspired compilation has just been released and I shared a couple tracks from that, featuring Emma Anderson, Heidi Berry, and Ian Masters. We also gave the Singaporean artist Shye another spin, and of course, many of your favorite shoegaze, dreampop and post-punk tracks, including a Creation Records set.

View the playlist below and listen to the show recording above for up to two weeks after it airs.

Big Sonic Heaven playlist for Aug. 23, 2026

• “Hyperballad” – Björk
• “Alfie” – deary
• “Blood Spilled” – Blonde Redhead
• “The Light That Surrounds You” – Echo & The Bunnymen
• “Baby Talk” – Lush
• “Bleed” – She’s Green
• “Boyfriend” – Majesty Crush
• “Hurt” – The Haunted Youth
• “Last Dance” – The Secret French Postcards
• “Skin Of The Night” – M83
• “Living In Another World” – Talk Talk
• “I Wanted It To Be You” – Shye
• “Catch The Breeze” – Slowdive
• “On My Own” – Ulrich Schnauss
• “You & them & missing” – BlauDisS &Tilly
• “Falter” – Acopia
• “To Here Knows When” – My Bloody Valentine
• “Does This Hurt?” – The Boo Radleys
• “It’s a Fine Day (feat. Ian Masters)” – Stefano Guzzetti
• “Lilac Wine” – Jeff Buckley
• “Chimär (Gbg)” – Kallsup
• “Magic Only” – Panda Riot
• “Change” – Prepare My Glider
• “Tristan / Sanvean” – Dead Can Dance
• “Bad Dream” – Flower Face
• “White Light” – Locust & Olive Kimoto
• “St. Swithin’s Day” – Dubstar
• “Brussels Is Haunted” – Echo & The Bunnymen
• “Deep Ocean Vast Sea” – Peter Murphy
• “Love’s Riddle (feat. Emma Anderson & Heidi Berry)” – Stefano Guzzetti
• “Face” – Moev
• “Take Forever (feat. Robert Smith)” – The Japanese Popstars

Tonight, in Big Sonic Heaven, we brought you some great new shoegazey, atmospheric music. We featured Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek, also known as L’Rain, whose genre-bending music has been described as kaleidoscopic. We also featured some beautifully layered atmospheric shoegaze from In Inertia, out of Jakarta, Indonesia. We played the new Shye, who always delivers a great Dreampop track, and the first single from Swervedriver’s Raise:demos album coming out this October, and your favorite Shoegaze, Dreampop, and Post-Punk tracks.

Big Sonic Heaven playlist for Aug. 16, 2026

“Black Celebration” – Depeche Mode
“Down with the Upward” – A Shoreline Dream (feat. Mark Gardener)
“Brussels Is Haunted” – Echo & The Bunnymen
“Les Yper-Sound” – Stereolab
“Flawed (demo version”) – Swervedriver
“Musette And Drums” – Cocteau Twins
“There Must Be so Much More” – Pink Turns Blue
“Ophelia 3:58” – Johnny Marr
“Are You Safe?” – Maquillage
“500 (Shake Baby Shake)” – Lush
“Never Follow Suit” – The Radio Dept.
“Lusty” – Lamb
“I Wanna Disappear” – Starflyer 59
“Breaking My Light” – Minor Victories
“Love Spells” – Attic Ocean
“Six Different Ways” – The Cure
“In The Flowers” – Sea Lemon
“What Remains Is Beautiful” – In Inertia (feat. Niskala)
“Bonny” – Prefab Sprout
“I Wanted It To Be You” – Shye
“Bright As Yellow” – The Innocence Mission
“The Sweetness Of Honey” – Club 8
“Euphoria (Firefly)” – Delerium
Want You – deary
“Hoppípolla” – Sigur Rós
“Dark Horse” – Edward Ka-Spel
“So And Slow It Grows (7″ Remix)” – WIR
“Death Cults” – Dead Can Dance
“elmyra” – L’Rain
“Harrowdown Hill” – Thom Yorke
“Come Together (7″ Version)” – Primal Scream
“Ruined In A Day” – New Order
“swim” – Night Tapes
“After the Rain” – The Orange Peels
“Crown of Thorns” – Erasure
“My Times Up” – The Raveonettes