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This past Valentine’s Day weekend, a common sight in the usual places where hand-holding pairs wander on afternoon dates broke the mold for conventional coupling: groups of young women celebrating the holiday in the spirit of both romance and friendship. They entered theaters bearing popcorn and tissues, ready for a group cry to Emerald Fennell’s florid cinematic update of Emily Brontë’s foundational anti-romance, Wuthering Heights. And in the romance-oriented bookstores increasingly popping up across America, they shopped together for spicy novels about hockey players coming to terms with their mutual attraction or dragon riders stealing kisses while saving their kingdoms. Someone running across a phalanx of these self-professed “book nerds” wouldn’t be wrong to sense a connection to 21st century pop music fandoms, the social networks supporting artists like Taylor Swift or Charli xcx. Bookstores with names like Slow Burn or Lovestruck sell bookmarks or other trinkets emblazoned with Swift lyrics alongside those with quotes from leading romantasy author Sarah J. Maas. One I recently visited in Nashville had heartthrob-themed votive candles for sale on the counter, featuring Wuthering Heights star Jacob Elordi, perennial internet’s boyfriend Pedro Pascal — and Bad Bunny. Pop icons can serve as ideal Male Main Characters alongside the usual movie stars.

Fennell understands how this decade’s resurgence of interest in literary love stories is connected to the phenomenon of music fans forming robust communities. Most pop hits are love stories, after all, and in the minds of romance readers, music plays behind each climactic kiss. In Wuthering Heights, with its Harlequin-cover imagery and a contemporary take on Brontë’s twisted, infernal view of erotic desire that turns it into 50 Shades of Victorian Fog, Fennell creates a setting that’s as much about today’s fashions and pop references as it is about the muck and intrigue of Brontë’s time. Doing so connects this Wuthering Heights with the bibliophile demographic that’s inseparably intertwined with the Swifties and Angels and other robust pop affinity groups that have redefined 21st century consumer culture. She even commissioned Charli xcx to write songs for the film, a challenge the inventor of Brat Summer eagerly accepted as a way to step aside from her club and drug era and into something more redolent of history and high art. Having closed the door on pop stardom temporarily with her pseudo-documentary film The Moment, the always experimental diva declared herself inspired by Velvet Underground violist and general art god John Cale’s description of his legendary former band’s music as “elegant and brutal,” a blend she hoped for on this new project. Her collaboration with Cale, the tone poem “House,” emulates Cale’s way of blending classical tropes with Leonard Cohen-like rock balladry. Its use in the grisly-sexy opening scene of Wuthering Heights sets the film’s mood as pure pop — grounded in pastiche and anachronisms, unconcerned with formal or historical accuracy, dedicated to bringing its story into the present moment.

The album Wuthering Heights is a circuitous journey, really a series of approaches to the inner world of Catherine Earnshaw, an anti-heroine whom Charli clearly finds sympathetic if sometimes also pathetic. Fitting its role as both part of and companion to the film (all three singles from the album get screen time, though folk songs and a deliberately sentimental score by Fennell’s longtime collaborator Anthony Willis more openly advance the plot), it alternates fully formed singles with short set pieces that sonically answer the lushly creepy imagery Fennell favors. There is one banger, the Eurodisco redux “Dying For You,” which taps the dopamine vein in romantic suffering. The strings-driven pop of “Seeing Things” suggests what Charli’s former friend Taylor Swift might have done with this story, but most of the album is far murkier and more fatalistic than anything that usually makes today’s pop charts. It’s closer to Charli’s own formative hyperpop forays, and to the post-punk experiments that leaked into the mainstream back when Kate Bush, music’s eternally unrivaled Brontë interpreter, wrote her 1978 breakthrough fantasia named after the novel.

While nothing on Charli’s album reaches the great Kate’s apex of enthrallment and abandon, she does connect with the spirit of those days when new wave was new and arty girls and boys were making grand gestures, from Pat Benatar’s rock to the maudlin lyricism of synth-driven bands like Talk Talk. On the impeccable playlist that Charli assembled for Spotify with help from Fennell, dream pop originators Cocteau Twins sit next to David Lynch soundtracker Julee Cruise, original abject rocker Iggy Pop, cloud rapper Yung Lean and costume punks Shakespears Sister. The playlist’s motivation resembles that of Charli’s original music, and Fennell’s film: to yank the gothic out of any one period, be it the 19th century or the 1980s, and follow its dim light through all kinds of sonic passages.

While sticklers for historical accuracy have found much to criticize in Wuthering Heights — despite the stylized scare quotes reinforcing Fennell’s insistence that her Heathcliff and Cathy are constructed from her own reference points alone, debate has raged about everything from Heathcliff’s racial identity to whether this is a love story at all — it is, in fact, tailor-made for the blissfully recombinant world of current romance reading. Enter a bookstore with a spicy focus and you’ll discover myriad variations on what the critic Shawna Lipton called “the bodice-ripper rebrand,” from updates on all-American faves like cowboys and quarterbacks to “dark romance” set in libraries and castles, sci-fi crossovers, and explicit quests to figure out the anatomy of sex with monsters, fairies or werewolves. Music occasionally becomes the subject of these novels, with aspiring songwriters and bad-boy rockstars serving as main characters. But whether it’s a plot point or not, choosing music to read by and to flesh out further dreams about their favorite characters is a major aspect of romance readers’ leisure time.

While I waited for the release of Wuthering Heights, I grew curious about the intersection of reading and listening to music at a time when high romance has taken over far more than Emerald Fennell’s fancy. I cast my net for other playlists and discussions about music to read by. I found much more than I expected — and frankly, I expected a lot. While my own taste in genre fiction runs more to murder than romance or fantasy, I’m fascinated by the burgeoning subcultures keeping bookstores — and, arguably, publishing — alive through their avid pursuit of all things wild, dark and spicy. What I’ve learned in my limited research is that these intersecting communities of readers do much more to celebrate their affinities than drop reviews on Goodreads; for many, reading is the heart of a sparkling creative lifestyle. And music is a big part of the cozy bibliophile’s world.

Besides Charli’s official playlist, for example, dozens of user-generated Wuthering Heights playlists appear across streaming services, most of which predate the existence of Fennell’s film. Dozens more surface in a simple search for “reading” and “romance,” with titles like “Booktok songs that destroy me,” “POV: a vampire is in love with you” and “reading cute romance books at 1 a.m.” A whole subset of playlists is designed to soundtrack specific books or series. Attached to this playlist-making surge is the use of music on #BookTok, where certain songs and artists become deeply linked with the novels and series fans celebrate. Some musicians are learning to take advantage of this connection: the Irish singer-songwriter Dermot Kennedy, for example, is often cited on Reddit as a bibliophile favorite, and maintains an Instagram “book club” where fans can see what he’s got on his own bookshelf. Literary websites also often make playlists devoted to a particular genre or author, some historically accurate (Jane Austen playlists abound, focusing on the music of Regency England) while others are more like fan lists — which, like Charli’s album, range freely throughout genres and periods.

Among lovers of contemporary genre fiction, certain musical styles have gained favor. Progressive metal, for example, syncs up well for readers of stories about fairies and dragons. A Reddit thread tagged “Sleep Token + Romantasy = Perfection” has readers matching songs by that popular if critically unloved band to various MMC’s, or male main characters. Some participants in the thread went so far as to connect specific scenes with passages in Sleep Token songs, and vice versa. “I literally just requested a book rec where the relationship feels like 4:15 to 5:20 of ‘Emergence,’ ” one fan wrote, citing a particularly bombastic, drum-driven climax. Other frequently cited metal and adjacent bands include the Deftones and the symphonic Nightwish.

The metalheads I know are uniformly bookish, so this alignment doesn’t surprise me — but if I’m being honest, nods go far more frequently to balladeers who fit the MMC mold, like Kennedy, Alex Warren and the lord of them all, Hozier. Playlists vary by genre according to who’s reading. Adjacent to romance are sci-fi authors like Nnedi Okorafor, whose followers bring an Afrofuturist sensibility to their playlisting, favoriting techno-savvy musicians like Sudan Archives. My NPR Music colleague Nikki Birch is a major fantasy fan, and she polled her friend group of BIPOC romance and fantasy fans for their picks. They listed a lot of classic R&B — Sade, Maxwell, Luther, Janet — alongside some jazz and contemporary classical artists like Tony Ann. There’s definitely a subset of bibliophiles who prefer instrumental music to read by, and a cohort of classical-lite composers and instrumentalists like Ann, Joel Sunny, Kelsey Woods and Taylor Ash have found success connecting with these listeners. Ash even has a lush, synth-driven song called “A Court of Thorns and Roses.”

Most often, readers sharing music through playlists and forums cite women as their musical inspiration. Florence Welch deserves special mention, not only because her Pre-Raphaelite persona predated the romantasy craze and probably helped feed it, but because she has written songs inspired by the works of Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and Kazuo Ishiguro. (Florence’s fans made a book club in her honor, Between Two Books, focusing on her favorites but eventually expanding to include an array of contributors.) In the past year, a new rival has emerged for Florence’s crown among book lovers: Paris Paloma, whose fans attend her concerts wearing hodgepodge period garb and dance in “fairy rings” after each show. Paloma’s 2023 song “Labour” swept across social platforms as a rallying cry for Gen Z women discovering, and enraged by, the double standard of work in many heterosexual relationships. As Paloma put it, “All day, every day, therapist, mother, maid / Nymph, then a virgin, nurse, then a servant.”

Last year, Paloma released a short film celebrating her fans; as images of shouting, smiling young women turned toward each other fill the screen, the songwriter intones, “At every single show, every night, I’m reminded of the power we have in our community and solidarity with each other.” This feminist pronouncement recalls the way romance readers talk about their bonds. As with many pop worlds, this one does break down into identity clusters — most of Paloma’s fans are white, as is the public face of the cozy bibliophile craze. BIPOC writers and readers of romance and fantasy are claiming space in bookstores and online, however, and, as I noted above, making their own playlists. One interesting subset of musicians who frequently appear on romance readers’ lists consists of Black and brown artists whose music defies easy categorization. FKA twigs, Spellling and Doechii, all artists who entertain the fabulous within their music, show up on many playlists.

The most recent artist to enter this space is Hemlocke Springs — the performing alter ego of Isimeme “Naomi” Udu — whose rococo dance-pop has won a strong fanbase among bibliophiles. Her just-released debut album the apple tree under the sea includes “sever the blight,” a truly gothic account of erotic thrall that, unlike most attempts to glom on to her glory, captures the nervous magic of Kate Bush. With a Game of Thrones-meets-Guy Maddin video that fully locates its story in a non-white universe, recalling Doechii’s fever dreams, and lyrics that infuse the gothic with intersectional awareness (“You see, I’m not Snow White / The fairest of our land,” Udu sings, Heathcliffing it up), “sever the blight” takes pop romantasy in a promising new direction.

As Emerald Fennell certainly understands, romance novels restage women’s fight for independence within environments far more exciting than the offices and apartments where readers might be living through similar power dynamics. The theatrical pop songs of artists like Paris Paloma and Hemlocke Springs do the same, adding a supernatural kick to the often frustrating struggles of women’s daily lives. Emily Brontë showed her genius for confronting the tangle of gender, class and racial hierarchies within a classic ghost story when she wrote Wuthering Heights; no matter how campy or sexy or pastiche-y a contemporary reinterpreter renders her tale, that mess, which we as humans are perennially trying and failing to clean up, lies at the heart of it.

Romance novels both acknowledge this human predicament and allow for some escape from it. Fantasy takes readers to another plane. Wuthering Heights, as an historical text with supernatural elements, addresses real inequities and oppression within a heightened framework. The dislocated music Charli xcx brings to Fennell’s version of the tale further destabilizes a story that has rattled readers for two centuries. But even in a far more comprehensible romance, the sensory immediacy of music can evoke and intensify an emotional shift in ways that up the stakes both within a story and beyond it. Bibliophiles creating needle drops to soundtrack their reading experiences subtly change the meanings of both the books and the songs they bring together.

This can happen in other media, too: Just consider Heated Rivalry, the homoerotic hockey drama that was also pulled from the bookshelf, and which has become streaming culture’s latest major thirst trap. That show’s revival of the 20-year-old Wolf Parade song “I’ll Believe in Anything” is a perfect instance of a needle drop enhancing high romance; playing behind a cathartic embrace that changes its main characters’ lives, the song conveys the queasy interplay of urgency and fear that Charli xcx captures differently in her Wuthering Heights songs. “Give me your eyes, I need sunshine,” sings Wolf Parade’s Spencer Krug, “your blood, your bones, your voice and your ghost.” What was it that Heathcliff said? “Haunt me, then!” Call it love or desperation — desire can feel this way. Like a chorus that doesn’t fade.

It was all a tad dystopian. I parked on a scalding day in late winter at an outdoor lot in downtown L.A. surrounded by corporate skyscrapers, the sidewalks lined with housing encampments. There was nothing distinct about the condo-like building Quantum Wellness is in — other than two welcoming Goliathan Buddha sculptures.

I entered into the spa’s glimmering white lobby to try their “zero body dry float,” a bed filled with 400 liters of heated water intended to create a weightless experience that alleviates pressure from the spine and joints and melts away stress. The beds are designed to mimic a traditional float tank — where a person is suspended in water filled with epsom salt, oftentimes in complete darkness — but the perk of these beds is there’s no need to get wet. At Quantum, the experience is 35 minutes long and costs $60.

“We really wanted to focus on calming people’s nervous systems down,” says Jeremy Hoffmann, the founder and CEO of Quantum Wellness Spa. “As far as the dry float goes, I think there’s very few pieces of technology that offer deep rest and restoration. It was a no-brainer.”

The spa offers everything from traditional services such as massages and facials to biohacking, IV drips and energy work. Inside it feels like it was built for a future where humans live underground, seeking to reconnect with what life was once like on Earth. Neon lights make the dark, cool hallway and rooms feel like you’re aboard a spaceship. Reserved moss and mycelium grow from a room with a crystal floor where I heard members vigorously doing breathwork. In the area with cold plunging and a sauna, the walls undulate with patterns that change color, designed to evoke arctic caves and volcanic rock.

At the front desk, I was greeted by a host who accompanied me down the hall and into a glowing cerulean room. “Do you have an intention?” he asked.

“Presence,” I answered.

Hartman prepares for her float experience at Quantum Wellness in downtown L.A.

(Dania Maxwell / For The Times)

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I stepped over the frame of the bed and laid down on a plastic sheet. The host handed me a blindfold and Bose noise-canceling headphones, playing the hypnotic sounds of a space drum with birds chirping in the distance.

“Are you comfortable?”

“Yes.”

Slowly, the host lowered me into the bed. I felt myself sink into the water, the warm fluid-filled plastic finding its way into all of my crevices.

“OK, time to relax,” I thought, taking a deep breath and audibly sighing out the day.

Almost immediately, much like in my morning meditation practice, I began to notice my frenetic, future-oriented thinking. What is the rest of my day going to look like? Maybe I’ll get Sweetgreen for lunch…

But, unlike in a meditation of the same length, at some point, my mind gave up its stubborn ruminations. I continually sighed (a sign my nervous system was downregulating), and I began to zone out to the repetitive sounds of the music. Before I knew it, the bed was rising again.

The experience was notably different from my time just a week prior at WellNest. The spa, open 24/7 in Pasadena, exclusively offers dry floating ($80 for an hour session).

The experience involves wearing a blindfold and Bose noise-cancelling headphones which play soothing music.

(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)

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Like Quantum, it also felt oddly futuristic. Ahead of arrival, I’d received a video that looked like a commercial for a healthcare company explaining how to find the building and check myself in. I escorted myself up a clunky metal utility elevator which opened into a warmly lit waiting room of beiges and pinks and a desk, both empty. If I had any questions, a person named Jane, my “Wellness concierge” whom I never met, texted me to let me know she was there to support me.

I let myself into the room and stepped into the bed, one foot at a time, the warm water inside the plastic sheet sloshing around and making me feel a bit wobbly. Unlike the bed at Quantum, I was not lowered down. Instead, some water filled in around me, but I didn’t feel a firmness that gave the sensation of being tightly held or suspended. In fact, it reminded me a bit of my childhood friend’s waterbed (fun, but not particularly therapeutic).

Wet or dry floating reportedly helps reduce short-term stress and anxiety.

(Dania Maxwell / For The Times)

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Anthony S. Saribekyan, the founder and CEO of WellNest, says he decided to start a dry float business after discovering the wonders of traditional float tanks for his anxiety and stress. The main benefit, he says, of the dry float versus the normal float is the convenience of not having to shower before and after. Both types of floats, he says, contain 9000 pounds of epsom salt. Dry float tanks are also more ecologically friendly because the water is sealed inside the system and typically only replaced every several months to years, rather than being regularly drained and replenished.

So far, the data is limited on the efficacy of dry floating compared to wet floating. One small study found that both types of floating increase relaxation, but that wet floating is more therapeutic.

The float tank (or isolation tank) was invented in 1954 by an eccentric researcher named John C. Lilly, who believed that an experience void of sensory input (sound, light or even gravity) was the key to understanding the nature of human consciousness. Beginning in the ’70s and ’80s, research into the benefits of wet floating took off — and has continued since, with studies funded by the National Institutes of Health. Today, the strongest and most consistent finding about wet floating is that it helps reduce short-term stress and anxiety, even after one session. There’s also been studies, many of which are smaller and more preliminary, showing the benefits of floating for conditions such as insomnia, body image dissatisfaction among people with anorexia, meth dependence and pain intensity, such as the stress placed on the body after a high-impact workout.

Emily Choquette, director of the Torrance-based Float Clinic and Research Center, says she hypothesizes that some, but not all, of the benefits received during wet floating would be achieved with dry floating, too. In studies at the Float Clinic and Research Center, Choquette says they use a zero-gravity chair — which is different from a dry float, but similar in that it creates a suspended feeling without a person being immersed in water. They’ve found the chair to be effective for many of the same conditions as wet floating, but, generally, it doesn’t seem to have as noticeable of an improvement on affect.

At least when it comes to wet floating, Choquette says, there’s enough research now that she’d like to see insurance companies cover it as an adjunct treatment for anxiety, in conjunction with therapy. As for everyone else, she sees it as a beneficial tool for a person’s wellness routine, much like yoga or meditation, something to help us reset amid the “constant bombardment of external feedback.”

As I emerged from the cavernous womb of Quantum and back out into the sprawling urban development, I had to admit: I did feel lighter, like my stress had been dialed down a few notches. Unlike before, when I had been rushing to my appointment, I walked a bit more slowly, cherishing the sun as it grazed my skin. Was it better than the reset I get after a massage in the San Gabriel Valley or a hike in the Angeles National Forest? It’s hard to say after one session, but it seems worth another visit.

Hartman tried two different locations for a dry float experience: one at WellNest and one at Quantum Wellness Spa, where she is pictured.

(Dania Maxwell / For The Times)

How did you build your village? We asked NPR’s audience this question in our newsletter in January, inspired by Life Kit’s interview with Priya Parker on how to create community.

The key is to start imagining the community you might want to live in and then take steps to make that a reality, says Parker, a conflict resolution facilitator and the author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters.

Many of our readers have done just that. We received dozens of responses from folks who’ve found creative ways to make lasting connections where they live.

One person said he’d gotten closer to his neighbors by hosting a weekly coffee date. Another strengthened her network of mom friends by organizing a night out. One man grew a garden in his front lawn just to have something to talk about with passersby.

Here’s a sampling of village-building activities from our readers. These have been edited for length and clarity.

Throw a party for your neighbors (and get their contact info) 

I live in a cul-de-sac with about 20 homes. We organized a Memorial Day cookout, invited the neighbors and requested their contact information. We have used the information to check in during power outages and weather events, like tornadoes. It helps us feel more connected to our neighbors, many of whom we would not know otherwise. — Linda Ray Miller

Find comforting ways to help out during hard times 

I grew up in a tight-knit Southern neighborhood where people just seemed to know what to do in times of trouble. If there was a major illness, a death in the family or any other difficult situation, the freezer-friendly meals, offers to babysit and cards of condolences would flood in. Everyone stepped up to make those who were struggling feel less alone and take burdens off their plate. — Annie Lerner Smithson

Invite neighbors out for coffee and conversation 

We have a wonderful new café in town, and I’ve been hosting a weekly table where I invite two neighbors to come and have coffee and conversation. It is now more important than ever to reach out to those who may not share our views, so that when a big tree branch falls across our driveway, we’re going to feel comfortable enough to go down the road and ask to borrow a chain saw. — Christopher Irion

Grow a garden as a springboard for small talk 

I had a very small front yard of grass and formal landscaping. I removed them and planted bulbs, perennials and blueberries. This gives my neighbors something to be interested in and something for us to talk about. It also motivated my immediate neighbors to plant flowers. — Friday Ululani

Make the mom village you wish you could have 

When my daughter was young, we noticed another child at her day care who seemed to have a similar personality. We sent a note home asking if they wanted a play date and have since become very good friends with that family.

A few months later, I was chatting with a few moms during day care pickup and suggested a night out for a drink. One of the moms literally gave me a hug! Six of us [now regularly] go out for “mom’s night out.” We’ve even got the dads going out for trivia once a month as well.

I’m so glad I didn’t stop at one mom friend and opened up my circle and created a village! — Emily Johnston

Share what makes you happy 

My daughter died a couple of years ago and I needed to have some sort of purpose to live.

With a bit of meditation, I realized what had always made me happy in life: sharing food, stories, music, art and games.

This is what I’ve begun to do. I started with potlucks. Then potlucks with an open mic. We’ve gone on to gathering around the fire with instruments and stories, bowling once a week and attending the local girls’ roller derby.

I started with just four couples, and now [the group numbers] 24. I expect this spring’s/summer’s potlucks will expand the group by a lot. — Terry Garrett 

Support a local business 

I just started a Punk Rock Movie Club in my little town of Catskill, N.Y. I wondered if anyone would come. In less than a week, 55 people in the Hudson Valley signed up to be members. It supports the theater that has reopened and gives me an opportunity to share my guilty pleasure and build a tribe of enthusiasts. — Jenny Toomey

Send them snail mail 

My favorite hobby is snail mail. I send over 200 letters and packages every year. I have a huge stash of supplies: cards organized by sentiment, a crate of fun things I can throw inside the card and a giant collection of stickers.

It’s a calming and fun activity, and it sincerely has led me to remain connected with people I otherwise would have completely lost touch with. — Mandy McGee

Thank you to those who emailed us with your responses for this callout. Stay in touch with Life Kit and sign up for our newsletter. You’ll get a weekly dose of expert advice on health, money, relationships and more.

The story was edited by Malaka Gharib. We’d love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at LifeKit@npr.org.

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