Quick Picks: Singer-Songwriter Raveena Aurora

Each week, we’re asking different writers, artists and others to share some of their current favorites and obsessions. This week we feature picks from singer and songwriter Raveena Aurora. Brooklyn-based Aurora is a student at NYU, enrolled at Tisch School of Arts, as a music performance major in the Clive Davis Institute Of Recorded Music. Her debut album ‘Where We Wander‘ released last year. Now she’s trading in her banjo for beats and making electronic, soul, trip-hop music under the alias luna luna. Look out for ‘Miss Behaved’, luna luna’s first album, this March. Raveena’s last folk release can be found on SoundCloud. Find her on Twitter and Facebook. 

1. Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine 

In this new Woody Allen feature, Cate Blanchett not only managed to beautifully capture how mental illness manifests in us in a physical sense (like the racing thoughts and anxiety Jasmine seems to suffer from), but also how it breaks and challenges our core being, affecting our personal relationships and then causing us to fall deeper and deeper into cycles of guilt, denial, feelings of isolation and ultimately, madness.

2. “The Soulmate You Deserve” by Cody Gohl

3. Favorite things from 2013

4. Love Songs & More

For Lovers (Wolfman featuring Peter Doherty) — This is my favorite love song of all time if you’re into that. (YouTube link)

Ridin’ (Lana Del Rey & ASAP Rocky) — So sexy. I’m so into the Kennedy visuals these two put together in Lana’s song “National Anthem“, and this song serves a wonderful extension of that kind of vibe. (YouTube link)

You Always Hurt the One You Love (Mills Brothers) — I want to fall in love to this song. (YouTube link)

From the Sun (Unknown Mortal Orchestra) — I fell in love to this song once. The ending was as sad as this song is. At least I got one of my now favorite bands out of it, I guess. (YouTube link)

You and Me (Penny & The Quarters) — I can’t fall in love to this song because Blue Valentine stole it so its way to kitschy to do that now :/ (YouTube link)

Poetic Justice (Kendrick Lamar ft. Drake) — This has my two favorite people in one song so I get a little turnt whenever I play this and walk around in the LES, feeling *pretty trill*. The injustice Kendrick was served at the Grammys is the reason I don’t watch them anymore. You realize it’s just an event put together by the music industry to boost the major label’s biggest artist’s sales, right? (YouTube link)

Happiest Girl in the Whole USA (Lana Del Rey cover) — Okay, so this is my second Lana plug, but this performance is my favorite thing ever, especially because I frequent Arlene’s Grocery all the time when my friends play there. There’s something really uncomfortable and weird, but also super raw, about this performance; I’m not quite sure, but I’m hooked. (YouTube link)

Dedicated to The One I Love (The Shirelles) — The amount of times I’ve danced around my room melodramatically singing this. (YouTube link)

All Too Well (Taylor Swift) — I’ll be the first one to admit I’m T-swift’s second biggest fan (because honestly, her #1 fan is probably borderline stalker). This is a song on Red I initially overlooked and recently re-discovered, and it’s been on repeat ever since. (Youtube link)

All Night (Jai Paul) — I don’t know what rock you’ve been hiding if you didn’t hear Jai Paul’s leaked demos (AKA the best album of all of last year… yea, better than Beyonce. I went there.), but it’s sexy, it’s emotional, it’s beautiful, it’s entrancing, it’s raw, it’s PERFECT. This is one of my favorite’s from the ‘album’. (YouTube link)