MUSIC MONDAY: Five awesome songs to relax to

Most of these weekly lists of really great music focus on powerful, vibrant, feel good tunes designed to either lift your mood, get your adrenalin pumping or a combination of both.

There's a good reason for that too; the world has a lot to offer, and it's much easier to seize the scores of opportunities out there for us when we're feeling happy and energized.

Yet if we spend all our time bouncing off the walls in pursuit of a life most awesome, we're eventually gong to run out of steam and need nothing more than a good hard rest.

That's why this week's post contains five really awesome songs to which you can chill out, relax, and drift away to some much calmer place.

1) Flunk - Blue Monday
An apt title perhaps for a Monday morning in late November. This beautiful cover of the New Order classic from Norwegian outfit Flunk is as perfect a chill-out track as this blogger has ever come across.

2) William Fitzsimmons - Tide Pulls from the Moon
There's been many an evening, after a long day at the grindstone, when my body feels weary and my mind throbs and what I really need most in the world is a lie down, the clamour and stress of the world outside blocked by some delicate piece of music as the calm returns. I can honestly tell you that, in such moments, there's nobody I'd rather have with me to block out the outside world than The Beard himself, Mr. Fitzsimmons.

3) Live - Overcome
I'm always struck by the haunting blend of power and fragility in this luscious ballad from the always-impossible-to-Google band, Live. It's a song full of emotion and beauty, and if the above song from William Fitzsimmons doesn't float your boat when it comes to taking a few moments out of your day to just lie down, I'm sure this will.

4) Angus & Julia Stone - Yellow Brick Road
Almost everything Angus & Julia Stone produce is like a little haven of serenity captured in several minutes of blisful acoustic guitars, yet perhaps no song of theirs is quite as calming or as soothing as the wonderful Yellow Brick Road.

5) Ryan Adams - Wonderwall
We started with a cover, and so we shall end with a cover. Ryan Adams' haunting, memorable rendition of the Oasis favourite is a truly mesmerizing song that provides incredibly calming background music for those all-too-rare moments when you're done with the daily slog and ready to relax.