As the seasons change, so can the state of our minds. Here lies a playlist featuring a mixture of light-hearted, dreamy, and groovy tunes—a dose of vitamin D for your brain!

The bridge between music and your health is much closer than you’d think. It is, in fact, in our biology. Our brains are extremely receptive to music and the blend of sounds. It can pick up on music’s valence, how positive a track sounds, as well as the salience of sounds, how it impacts a person emotionally and motivation-wise. Listening to positive music can lower levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, while increasing neurotransmitters like dopamine in the brain’s reward system, bringing in feelings of pleasure and lifting your overall state.

Even our autonomic nervous system, a network of nerves that controls unconscious processes like heart rate and breathing, responds to music. Changes in tempo and valence can cause subtle physiological effects.

With the sun setting so early, temperatures dropping, and academic stressors rapidly stacking, keeping your mental and physical health in tune is vital. These are a mix of songs that help keep the pep in my step and chin up high. Perhaps, it will do the same for you.