My family drove for basically any vacation growing up. We did 15-hour days from Nevada to North Dakota, short hauls from Vegas to Ventura, and everything in between. 

With six kids in my family, we rented a nine-passenger van for this particular trip to Montana for a family wedding. As the youngest, I squeezed into the backseat, where a Crayola-crusted cupholder held gas station sodas and my folded-up books of Mad Libs. 

Before the final stretch of this trip, we detoured to see Yellowstone. I don’t remember Old Faithful. I don’t remember much from the wedding, either. 

But I remember that “Numb” by Linkin Park was song No. 42 on a 45-song CD my sister made for me. Fighting car sickness, I listened to that CD on a plastic portable player with headphones too big for my head.

Most of the songs were radio hits. I skipped along.

Song No. 41 was “Milkshake” by Kelis. Song No. 43 was “Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira. I remember those in particular, because I backed up to replay “Numb” at least twenty times between Wyoming and Big Sky. 

When the trip was over, I fixated on the band even more. I found every Linkin Park song online, scanning through a primitive YouTube for “Faint” and downloading “Hybrid Theory” from LimeWire. When their 2007 album “Minutes to Midnight” came out, my oldest brother gave it to me as a present. 

But the real gift came on that Montana trip: an early lesson about the correlation between good music and a good drive. As I got older, car jams became a big deal in my family.

My dad kept his subwoofers fresh. Bass knocked my elementary eardrums on songs by The Killers and Nerf Herder. My brother played Lil Wayne and James Blunt on rides home from school. My sisters would blast emo bands so loudly in their beat-up Suburban that I’d cry for silence. 

Now, I can’t stand a quiet car, and I’ve got my own speakers to blast. I’m planning on testing them on a few road trips this summer. With holiday weekends coming up, I figure you might be, too. 

So with that in mind, here are a few songs to put on your road trip rotation.

First, I should recommend that, if you’re staying in town this week, you check out Elle King at the Capitol Theatre. You almost certainly know her feverous rockabilly pop hit “Ex’s and Ohs,” but King’s got more in the chamber than that.

Teenage blues prodigy Grace Bowers will open the show at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday. Tickets start at $45. 

The perfect rural road trip song has to have one of two things: massive catharsis or delicate, 50-mile-per-hour introspection. Big Thief has both. 

This all-hits-no-misses indie band is led vocally by storytelling genius Adrianne Lenker and breezy guitar-picker Buck Meek. They appeared at Daytrotter this week in 2016 and played three songs that were never officially released: “In Your Hair,” “Iris” and “Branches.” 

With the machine gun strums on “Iris,” and the Adrianne-Buck harmonies on “Branches,” this is a trio of tracks that should go with you and your significant other on a spontaneous trip this summer.

While you’re at it, take the rest of their discography, too, which starts with 2016’s “Masterpiece” and leads to Lenker’s solo 2024 record “Bright Future,” a masterpiece of its own. 

Is your road trip a red eye? Are you pounding energy drinks just to make it to dawn? Well, there’s no better stimulant than the sexy, hyper-pop caffeine pill of “Vroom Vroom.” 

The song opens with Charli uttering a simple “Let’s ride,” which gives way to industrial bass knocks that dribble across the verses. By the hook, Charli’s voice is feathering, spinning circles around a violent beat that sounds like if you autotuned the squeaks of basketball sneakers.

If you dig “Vroom Vroom,” check out Charli’s new record “Brat.” I think it’s her best one yet. 

Imagine if Bruce Springsteen fronted Hippo Campus. Or if Tom Petty had another band called the Time Travelling Wilburys where he made music from a 2020’s garage rock practice space.

That’s the new Good Looks album “Lived Here for A While,” probably the best way to spend 40 minutes in your car this month. 

“If It’s Gone” is as good of an opening track as you’ll hear in 2024. It lays out the themes of the album, which moves at a cruise control pace from start to finish. There are thoughtful heartland rock songs about loss, religious trauma, gentrification and friendship. It’s a gift. 

As far as car karaoke catharsis goes, “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” is the gold standard. I’d even say it’s one of the greatest rock songs of this century. 

Over six, explosive, catchy minutes, “Drunk Drivers” argues that fallibility is the one thing we are guaranteed. The killer whales are migrating. The drunks are driving. None of us can quit spitting into the wind.

But as the song boils to an explosion of power chords and mumbled vocals, songwriter Will Toledo comes to an epiphany that feels like letting your foot off the gas: It doesn’t have to be like this. 

“We’re just trying,” Toledo sings, before turning the mirror on himself. “I’m only trying / To get home.”

I’ve ripped up my throat belting this in the car too many times to count. 

I heard the latest Hurray For The Riff Raff album “The Past Is Still Alive” on a spontaneous Wisconsin trip in March. It made for perfect driving music, turning the time between Dubuque and Madison into a blink. It’s hard to pick a favorite track, but today I’ll go with “Dynamo,” because of its travel tales. 

“My baby on a plane, my baby on the road,” croons songwriter Alynda Segarra. Their folksy trembles make Segarra sound like something of a modern Lucinda Williams. Add this album to your travel to-do list. 

Last year, I drove across the country twice. First: alone, on a move from Phoenix to Minneapolis. Then again: with my girlfriend, on a move from Las Vegas to the Quad-Cities.

On both drives, when I passed through the liminal space that is Nebraska, I put on Ethel Cain’s 2022 classic “Preacher’s Daughter,” a twangy indie record where every song moves like an orchestra. 

“Thoroughfare” is the crown jewel, a country opera about fleeing your Midwestern town and abruptly driving to the Pacific with someone you love. Even though I was playing out its narrative in reverse, it was a perfect “traversing America with my soulmate” score. 

“And I said, ‘Hey, you want to see the West with me?'” Cain asks on the hook, her voice bursting with hope. 

I’ve seen the West. I’ve heard it, too.

It sounds something like “Thoroughfare.” But it also sounds like the hum of conversation from a van’s tattered cloth backseat, and the click-click-click of a portable CD player’s repeat button.