Welcome to the first installment of the CUI’s Playlist Project, a biweekly column that will hopefully help you discover music both new and old, add some variety to your library and provide soundtracks to your semester that will keep your heads bopping and ears satisfied along the way.

A brief aside about me: I’m Annie Melton, one of the CUI’s managing editors, and I’m about as big a music nerd as you can get. My aim in writing this column and putting together these playlists is not to go all hipster-obscure on you — please complain to me if that ever happens — but to provide a platform for music of all genres and time periods that can get lost in the fray of the countless music blogs and sites that exist.

So the idea is to have two playlists every week, on Monday and Thursday. Ten to 15 songs. No weeding through various tags and categories, just something you can click “play” on and hopefully like, or at least be interested in, all the way through.

In the future, there will be specific topics. Next week we’ll explore local artists and bands that have their debut albums coming out soon. But for this first week, I thought I would share with you some songs that I’ve been loving lately –a typical mixtape sort of deal.

And one more thing — let’s do this together. If there’s something you loved or hated or had a strong reaction to, comment on the posts or reach out via social media. If you have artist or song suggestions or ideas for weekly topics, let me know. The more interaction, the better for creating an awesome forum for music listening and discovery.

Contact CU Independent Managing Editor Annie Melton at Anne.melton@colorado.edu.