This winter, I have spent a great deal of time walking. I’ve walked through wind and rain, through that fuzzy sort of frost which then melts into rain once more, through the Fens in the cool morning and across Parker’s Piece on frozen black nights. It has been me, my Uggs and my Sony headphones against the frozen wasteland of the world. Thus, I feel rightly experienced enough in seasonal soundscape curation to instruct you on exactly what you should be listening to this winter should you decide to take a few chilly, seasonal walks, too.

‘Winter Spring Summer Fall’ – The Postmarks

This one is for those walks when you want to feel particularly sentimental. Perhaps you are ambling slowly beneath the bare arms of trees who you remember in full autumn bloom, thinking about the past year, memories of seasons passed as the year comes to a close. It does not matter that Tim Yehezkely is actually crooning softly about winter melting into spring, and it’s only halfway through winter presently. Her voice is soft enough to feel like the snow that may or may not be falling as you walk; the image of a “heart in hibernation” is seasonal enough to make it fitting.

“I’ve walked through wind and frost and rain, through the Fens in the cool morning and across Parker’s Piece on frozen black nights”

‘Everyday’ – Yo La Tengo

And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out is yet another album that seems to stretch across seasons. It is at once a record of those last few days of summer – that odd uneven time (term courtesy of Plath) – and warm autumn dusks. Yet still it manages, in the eerily melodic ‘Everyday’, to perfectly soundtrack a good winter walk. Four or five o’clock, cutting across the Fens and it is already dark, in that sudden, all-at-once manner with which night descends in winter. So when you want to feel slightly moody, slightly eerie, I’d advise you look first at ‘Everyday.’

‘Knee Deep at the National Pop League’ – Camera Obscura

The jingle bells threaten to be just too saccharine sweet, as does the harmony on the chorus, so tread wisely if you’re feeling Scroogian this winter. But for those of you seeking a refuge from the cruel cold, I encourage you to follow Tracyanne Campbell’s gentle Glaswegian lilt as she leads you through a ‘winter wonderland’ of whimsical romance, replete with snowball fights, warm nights in bed and tentative first loves.

‘Lights Out’ – Broadcast

“It sounds like you are roaming a wintry wasteland with only Trish Keenan’s soft voice to keep you sane”

Sometimes it can be comforting to feel as if the world is closing in on you. This is the exact feeling Broadcast channels with ‘Lights Out’ – especially in the Maida Vale sessions version. There’s a cool, desolate sparseness to the synth; it almost sounds like an alarm at the end of the world, and you are roaming a wintry wasteland with only Trish Keenan’s soft voice to keep you sane.

‘Rocking Around the Christmas Tree’ – She & Him

First, let me apologise for the twee explosion that this list is nearly shaping up to be. Second, let me confess that I am not really sorry at all. The recent She & Him renaissance is great news for my secretly very twee soul. But it is something of an outrage to me that their 2011 album, the aptly titled A She & Him Christmas, has been veritably snubbed in all this hubbub. In this album, the duo cover everything from ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ to, of course, ‘Rocking Around the Christmas Tree’ with their signature simple, prim folksy sound. If this is not enough to sell you on the track, let me tell you that the original deluxe edition of the album came packaged with a hat and mittens — how sweet!

‘Winter Lady’ — Leonard Cohen

Winter is not complete without at least a dash of Leonard Cohen. In ‘Winter Lady’, Cohen lulls us into a lush winter world suffused with old folklore and ill-fated love. A guitar plays in one ear as if sounding from somewhere far off, and a fiddle sings in the other. ‘Winter Lady’ (and the whole album, I believe) is finely tuned for mornings spent looking out of the window at a frozen garden with something warm to drink in your hand.

“ In ‘Winter Lady’, Cohen lulls us into a lush winter world suffused with old folklore and ill-fated love”

‘In The Land of my Dreams’ – Anna Domino

If you want to feel like a lonely older woman roaming the frozen streets of ’80s New York, wrapped in a sleek mink coat and musing on your distant older lover, then wow, we have something in common. Let me advise you, then, to look no further than Anna Domino’s reimagining of Aretha Franklin’s earlier hit, ‘In the Land of My Dreams’. One of the greatest features of walking with music is the ability to imagine. The landscape transfigures under the spell of song, and all of it – the music, the snow, your painfully frozen fingers – are swept up in the romance of imagination. With this sad and sultry track, Domino engages the frosty land of her dreams just as much as she does ours.

Here is my list. I don’t profess to be particularly diverse. Winter brings out a terrible sentimentality in me, and it reflects in some of my soppy choices here. For this, I would ordinarily apologise. But, I ask you, if winter is not the time to be soft and sentimental, then when is?