With daylight savings promoting more sleep, more eating and less productivity, it’s high-time the Clarion made a fall playlist to help all you Pioneers as the golden leaves fall and test deadlines creep up.

“Autumn Leaves”
Edith Pilaf

“Since you went away the days grow long / and soon I’ll hear the winter songs / but I miss you most of all my darling when autumn leaves start to fall.”

This jazz classic has been done a thousand times in a thousand ways, but it never detracts from the beautiful melody that has haunted listeners for years. With lyrics that speak of a summer-fling ended too soon, this song is perfect for the sad and quiet moments that inevitably come with the changing leaves.

“Autumn Sweater”
Yo La Tengo

A fall playlist just can’t be made in good favor without this classic autumn jam. Weird, indie pop may prompt you to drive in a beat-up four runner with windows that don’t roll up, eating Wendy’s chicken sandwiches and hands that grip the steering wheel with an ease that only comes with long drives to nowhere.

There are streets with trees lining them, all crimson and gold.

“Those to Come”
The Shins

Apparently, people of our generation just skipped the Chutes Too Narrow album by indie band The Shins. This is a travesty, quite frankly. This song is a beautiful and lulling transition into the cold and cozy days of winter.

Speaking of love and loss and James Mercer’s lulling voice, this is the ultimate autumn song, complete with patterned sweater and Christmas socks.

And of course, “making tea in your underwear.”

“I Knew You Were Trouble.”
Taylor Swift

First, don’t be hating. The fact of the matter is, DU is on the quarter system. Which means while all our friends at the surrounding Denver and Front Range schools are getting ready for turkey and mashed potatoes, Nat King Cole and Christmas lights, we are slowly falling into the despair that is pulling multiple all-nighters.

While friends are fattening up for the winter, we are desperately gulping cups of steaming hot coffee just to maintain that bloodshot crazed look of a DU student during finals.

So, when it’s 2 a.m. and you still have five pages to write before your 8 a.m. final and you can’t remember what the sun looks like because you’ve been inside studying for so long, it is then that you realize: There is no shame in listening to the new Taylor Swift album.

Her awkward and danceable attempts to go pop with dub step beats might just save your sanity.

“Skyfall”
Adele

Try to feel like you’re not either a swanky female in a black, floor length and highly revealing dress or a suave male pursuing that girl while the new and epically improved Bond theme song is blaring in your ear buds.

The new Daniel Craig film hits theaters this Friday, completing the tradition of rolling post-turkey day into the movie theater to indulge in classic action film-pop-corn-sticky-candy goodness.

“Passenger”
Lisa Hannigan

The season of traveling is upon us and whether you are flying home for turkey day or driving across the mountains to be with loved ones in a few short weeks, Lisa Hannigan’s harrowing Irish vocals and plucky banjoing make this song an autumn staple.

You can almost hear the leaves crunching under foot in the dappled and lazy afternoon light while smelling a neighbor’s baking apple pie wafting on the breezes.

“Two Weeks”
Grizzly Bears

Congratulations, folks. We have made it to the last two weeks of fall quarter. There’s nothing like realizing you’re in the home stretch, putting on some Grizzly Bear and neglecting the 400 pages of reading you were supposed to do by last Wednesday.

For the rest of the Clarion’s fall playlist, check out the lifestyles section online where we’ve deftly mastered WordPress to display a Spotify playlist.

My fellow Pioneers, good luck with finals, surviving family dinners and enduring the children-screaming atrocity that is your local mall. Happy Holidays.