Soundtrack for Grey Skies: Our Bay Area Rainy Day Playlist

There is a hush over the Bay Area when the rains come in. The hills turn emerald, the bay flattens to pewter, and weekend errands give way to mugs of coffee and the couch. From our East Bay studio, we have watched Saturdays unfold from the window. The list below holds the songs we reached for during those hours, music that matches the slow drip of fog off the Golden Gate.

Think13 is built around the work of musicians Dee and Christoph, and we treat playlists as a small but honest piece of our output. A setlist for a rainy day is less about novelty than pacing and warmth. The selections blend artists we have played alongside at Bay Area venues, friends recorded in Oakland warehouses, and tracks that never disappoint when the rain settles in.

A playlist is rarely just a playlist. It records where you first heard a song. Some were sketched during residencies in North Beach cafes, while others came home from late sets at the Make-Out Room or the Starline Social Club. We arranged them so the mood deepens as the day unfolds, from gentle morning warmth to longer pieces that fit a late evening with rain tapping the skylight.

We wrote this with listeners in Melbourne and Hobart in mind, cities where grey skies and sideways rain are familiar in winter. If your Saturday looks more like Bondi than Berkeley, the playlist still holds. There is something to be said for borrowing a mood from another coastline when your own afternoon has opened up to a slow stretch of nothing in particular.

A mood more than a genre

The list leans toward acoustic textures, slow drums, and songs with room around the vocals. A rainy day seems to ask for singers who know how to leave space, since tracks with too many layers tend to fight the sound of rain. A single voice and a nylon string guitar settle into it. You will hear folk-adjacent writing, singer-songwriter records, and instrumental pieces that work well between songs.

Tempo matters too. A playlist that starts too slow loses the listener before lunch, while one that begins too upbeat feels like it is arguing with the weather. The first hour hovers around a gentle walking pace, just enough motion to keep the room from feeling heavy, but soft enough to read by or carry a quiet conversation.

Morning starters with gentle lift

The playlist opens with songs that match the moment you first peek outside and see the street slick and empty. Bright but acoustic, they let the day settle rather than demand attention. We often reach for older tracks here, the kind of recordings that sound like they were made in a room with wooden floors and one good microphone. Christoph puts on something from the early seventies, while Dee prefers recent folk records out of Sebastopol and the central coast.

A small pocket of bossa nova sits in the first third, which always surprises people. A little Marcos Valle sounds right with a slow morning and tea, especially when the bay is grey. These are songs for putting on a sweater and letting the morning do its thing.

Midday drift while the work continues

By noon, the rain has settled into a steady rhythm, and we keep moving. The midday section leans on songs with a steady pulse, the kind of records that pair well with answering emails, sketching setlists, or sorting through demo submissions. It is music that lives comfortably in the background without disappearing entirely.

This is where some of the newer Bay Area artists tend to land. We have shared stages with songwriters from Oakland, Richmond, and the Sunset, and many write in a way that suits a working afternoon. We also drop in tracks from Australian acts we admire through Triple J rotations, including a piece of indie folk that always lands well on a wet Tuesday.

The afternoon slow burn

Late afternoon is when the playlist turns inward. The light is low, the tea is reheated, and the world feels like it has agreed to be quiet for a while. We pull out longer songs here, ballads that take their time, and a few instrumentals that feel like watching a slow river from a bridge.

You will find a little jazz, a little chamber folk, and at least one track Christoph recorded in a converted Berkeley garage during the atmospheric river season. It is the kind of music that makes you want to write a postcard, or sit with your eyes closed for a few minutes before dinner.

Evening windows and longer listens

When the streetlights come on and the rain is still there, the playlist opens up to its longest tracks. These are songs we save for after dinner, when the living room is dim and a record feels more honest than a television. There are a couple of quiet classics from the seventies, a slow contemporary piece from a Berlin songwriter, and an instrumental closer that has become a tradition in the studio.

We save the last track for the moment the rain finally lets up. It is a song about a long drive home, ending with the sound of an idling engine. By then the day feels a little gentler than it did at the start, which is about all we ask of a rainy Saturday.

A note for listeners in Melbourne and beyond

Rainy days south of the equator feel different. Melbourne's famous four-seasons-in-a-day weather means the playlist might come out twice in one afternoon, and Hobart winters have their own silence. The songs travel well, and they hold up alongside damper weather, flat whites, or a tram ride through Fitzroy in the dark.

A Perth songwriter we discovered during a tour stop last spring also appears. If you are listening from Sydney, Brisbane, or Adelaide, we hope the playlist lands the same way it does for us in Oakland, as a small companion for the kind of day that asks very little of you.

Making it your own

A playlist is most useful when it bends. Skip a track that does not fit your kitchen, repeat one that does, and do not worry about listening in order. We build ours so each song stands alone. Save it for a Sunday morning in Brunswick, a long Tuesday in Surry Hills, or a Friday afternoon in Fremantle when the rain finally arrives. The best rainy day soundtracks are the ones you slowly forget you built.

The playlist lives on our site alongside the rest of our updates, and you can stream it through the usual services. Pour something warm, draw the curtain halfway, and press play low. The rain will do most of the work from there.