Travel & road trips

What it misses isn't the past, but the future the past once promised.

Like a sun-faded old videotape, blurry, warm and a little wistful.

1980s Japanese city pop, chopped and sped up over French house kicks and filters: vaporwave in the sun.

Electronic music slowed down: warm grooves, jazzy chords and sea breeze, made for sunset.

A steady four-on-the-floor keeps different people in the same room.

Builds emotion through repetition and finds transcendence in unfolding melody.

Italian-made, Japan-loved high-speed dance music, the soundtrack of drifting and para para.

Wet guitars drenched in spring reverb and fast tremolo picking, like riding into a wave.

Swirling guitar effects, long jams and Indian instruments imitate a mind being opened.

One guitar riff, a big drum kit and one voice can fill a whole stadium.

Electric piano, harmonies and gentle guitar: '70s coastal-highway rock, smooth enough to play on a yacht.

Britain sung out loud: anthem choruses, guitar pop and working-class swagger.

No need to please everyone, just tell the truth to the people who care.

Uses a band's sound to write space, time and a journey without lyrics.

Starting from small stages, personal songwriting and peer networks, it gives a city many sounds that aren't uniformly packaged.

Horsehead fiddle, throat singing and distorted guitars gallop across the steppe; metal can carry wind and hoofbeats.

Gentle, slightly bookish pop, like a spring afternoon in a small-town record shop.

Rich chords, frequent key changes and fast, dense lyrics: modern Japanese pop built on piano and band, with choruses that soar.

Packs night views, sea breeze and city life into a refined, light groove.

French pop, bossa nova and '60s soft rock cut and pasted into a stylish Tokyo sound.

Horsehead fiddle, long song and northwest high singing, songs for vast grasslands and the loess plateau.

Long-song melodies of the grasslands over a four-on-the-floor beat: high, wide open, all blue sky and galloping horses.

Acoustic guitar "la pompe" strumming and violin, a lively Paris café night.

Samba's heartbeat turned down low, like someone whispering to you by the sea.

One acoustic guitar, a bottleneck slide and a rough voice: the earliest, rawest blues from the Mississippi riverbank.

One acoustic guitar and one story, bringing song back to between people.

Cabins, autumn woods and acoustic guitars, gentle harmonies singing solitude and nature.

Fiddle, tin whistle and bodhrán, dancing jigs in a stone pub on a misty coast.

Songs sailors roared while hauling rope: a lead line, a group answer, stomping as the beat.

Pickup trucks, highways and small-town heartbreak, sung in the plainest melodies.

Country storytelling and acoustic guitar wrapped in pop hooks and shiny production.

Three-finger banjo rolls, mandolin and fiddle taking fast turns, joy on an Appalachian porch.

A mix of country, folk, blues and gospel, like a traveller's song by a desert gas station.

Accordion and guacharaca's two-step shuffle, the riverside town dance that's slow yet impossible to stop.

The rolling rhythm of a full percussion corps, the heartbeat of the carnival parade.

Guitar, accordion and two-part harmony singing about heartbreak: Brazil's most-played national pop music.

Accordion, brass and twelve-string guitar: from norteño and banda to today's corridos tumbados, Mexico's most local sound.

Traditional corrido guitars with trap attitude and a young voice: new Mexican music sweeping Latin America and the US.

Guitar chops on the offbeat and a cheerful horn section: dance music faster than reggae and sweeter than punk.

A light stroke on the offbeat, giving both protest and love a sunny ease.

Light percussion and warm melodies turn a party into an easy, rolling groove.

Log-drum bass, jazzy piano and laid-back house groove, a sunset rooftop party in Johannesburg.

House's four-on-the-floor with South African rhythms, melodies and vocals in African languages: dance music with a spiritual feel.

Rapid guitar rasgueado, handclaps and footwork, with a heart-rending voice.

A lament from Lisbon taverns: the tremolo of the Portuguese guitar and a singer's long sigh, singing of a longing that can't go home (saudade).

Accordion, a rainy cafe and a storytelling singer: French chanson, where the words matter more than the tune.

Balalaika and accordion getting faster and faster, clapping, stomping and squat-kicking: one song becomes a village party.

Oud, darbuka and ornamented singing with modern pop production, a desert city night.

Big song-and-dance numbers from Bollywood films: strings, tabla and electronic beats all making a grand entrance.

Whistling, echoing electric guitar, whip cracks and choral cries: a showdown in the noon desert.

Makes every town and every farewell a place on the journey you can come back to.