NPR Music - All Songs Considered: Gracie Abrams hits a wall, more best new songs

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Our latest mix of the week’s best new songs includes a moody reflection on burnout from Gracie Abrams, rising L.A. duo Evening Elephants, the elusive electronic collagists Ear and more.  NPR Music’s Dora Levite joins host Robin Hilton.Please leave a glowing review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And tell a friend to listen!Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] artists and songs:(00:00) Intro(01:45) Gracie Abrams: “Hit the Wall”(08:10) Zoh Amba: “Eyes Full"(14:18) Jazmin Bean: “Darling”(21:57) Ear: “Ne Plus Ultra”(27:46) Evening Elephants: “A Digital Touch”(33:07) Knats: “Carpet Doctor (feat. Geordie Greep)”See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This episode of All Songs Considered comes to you from the NPR Music Podcast, your one-stop shop for all things in the music verse that are good and great. We've got new drops of this show, new episodes of All Songs Considered every Tuesday, along with Alt Latino on Wednesday's New Music Friday at the end of every week. On this episode, we are talking about the best new songs of the week. Imperial Music's Dora Levitt. Hello, Robin. How is your weekend, Dora?

Did you spend the entire weekend listening to the massive Drake drop that we got at the end of last week? You know, I spent the entire weekend saying, I really need to listen to all three of the Drake albums. And I really need to focus because I think it would be really funny if I picked only three Drake songs. One from each record, yes, exactly, yes. And then I never found the time. It's a lot. I actually did listen to all three albums. It's just too much. It's too much music.

There were little moments as I was listening along where I thought, If I heard just this one song out of context, I think that's pretty great. That's a pretty great song. But it's just too much. It all just starts to blur together and it just became a big audio mush. He's going to be all over the, he's going to be like the number one spot through the number 10 or 20 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 when the latest charts come out. I thought it was funny. Of all of the songs that I listened to and all of the lines in those songs, I thought the most appropriate.

line was, all the numbers are final, no t-shirts, no vinyl, y'all about to make me richy like Lionel. First of all, honestly, that's a pretty great line. And yes, we're all about to make you very, very rich. Well, I actually have been spending a lot more time listening to stuff that is on the Billboard Hot 100. I've been trying to listen to more pop music, like popular music and maybe that sounds ridiculous to most people but I don't listen to a lot of pop music. I never really have listened to Top 40 radio or anything but I've been finding a lot of stuff that I

genuinely enjoy maybe we'll do a whole show about like how to love pop music but one of the artists that I've been listening to a lot more lately because we just got a new single from her is Gracie Abrams. I don't know if you've heard the new single yet. It's called Hit the Wall. Have you? I haven't heard it. No. It just came out. She recently announced that she's got a new album coming out. It's called Daughter from Hell. And again, the first single we got from it is called Hit the Wall. I'm a crack in the pavement.

I'm a slip-nard. I'm afraid that my forges is just a glass box. I should know what I'm playing, but I forgot. Felt good for a day. But that stopped. And I once saw clearly, but it's bloodshod. And I want you so badly, but I close off. I thought we'd get married, but I guess I'm not.

Now you can watch me hit the wall. Hit the wall. I just hit the wall. I'm not a problem you can solve. We're in the cost impossible. I hit the wall. I hit the wall But I get caught

A room full of doctors And an ink plot I'm drawn into headlights Have a blind spot Below using a mabel A downgrade I am the cost impossible For the sharp plate

Ricochet Sooner than to my silence It so loves me To the crowd Hit the wall I really appreciate how much I feel like she's taken a step back from her songwriting. I feel like I'll admit I am not the biggest fan of Gracie Abrams music, but I really was a big fan of her before she started releasing music.

I used to listen to her singing videos on Instagram and I think it was mostly Instagram, not YouTube. And when she started releasing music, I felt disappointed that it felt like she was really trying to make a type of thing rather than like the music that I watched her just make with her guitar. Like she kind of tried to like make like make this image. But here I really like how there is really minimal drums. It's really guided by her voice. And there's a really nice build to the entire song. Yeah. It's pretty spare. Yeah. It's interesting you flag that as one of the issues that you had when she started releasing music because the theme of the song is one. I feel like I've been hearing a lot, which is the idea of feeling this pressure to be something that you're not and that you think maybe

you're supposed to be. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing new about that idea in a lot of ways. Generations people have thought like, oh, about I should be this, I should be that. This is what my family wants me to be or whatever. But I do wonder if it's more intense and more common now and if it just works people over more now just because of social media and you see these images and these ideas of things that you should be. be. And I don't know, there's something about this song that breaks my heart a little bit. And I don't know if I've

just become more sensitive as I've gotten older to people struggling to be something that they think they're supposed to be and hitting the wall and exhaustion and especially seeing, you know, my kids are in full tween and teen mode and trying to help them navigate this whole world. Yeah, I don't know. It just kind of broke me a little bit. Yeah. She's incredibly vulnerable here and like talking about how in this moment, like you said, she is kind of breaking and really trying to do what feels more authentic to her in a way that she hasn't been able to. I feel like there are so many eyes on Gracie Abrams just in popular culture in general, like beyond her music, her love life, her everything.

But I really do like this song more than I have liked her music in the past. Yeah, I've heard the whole album. I got an early listen again. And the album's called Daughter from Hell. And I really, really love it. I think it's the best thing she's ever done. That song, again, is called Hit the Wall. The album, it's from, Daughter From Hell, is not out until July 17th.

I actually think this next song that I have has a similar sense of vulnerability and tenderness to it. It's a song from Tennessee-based artist Zoomba, and the song is called Eyesful. How do you spell that? Z-O-8. H-A-M-B-A. Okay. I'm surprised you haven't heard it yet. I feel like you'll like that.

No, no. I've also never heard of Zawamba, so this is all new. Right. Wow, totally new to me. Never heard of this artist before. That guitar. Isn't it amazing? Incredible.

Incredible. Okay, they were new to me too. And when I heard, this was the second single off of their debut album, which is also called Eyesful, that comes out in June. But when I heard these two songs with their kind of screeching voice with this really crunchy guitar, I became obsessed. And I was reading that they actually started in like free jazz saxophone. Right. I was just reading that too while we were listening to the song. And I thought, saxophone, they play saxophone, flute, guitar, piano, and got their start as a free jazz artist.

I thought, what? I'm not hearing any of that in this. So I also wasn't hearing any of the free jazz influence. I feel like, but it does make sense because the instrumental is so deep despite it being fairly simple, like a kind of chugging of the same guitar courts. But this whole kind of world that they're able to build in just the instrumental alone was really impressive. Yeah, I wouldn't call anything about that super conventional. No. But it wasn't quite as loose or free form as I sometimes think with free jazz.

Yeah. But man, the way that guitar just roars and screams behind the whole stuff. song. Oh, yeah. And I love the way that they wrap their mouth around the words and the lyrics. And the lyrics, it's kind of repetitive. It's just this like interrogation of what it means to have your eyes full, like your eyes full of love and full of longing. And did you ever read the book Bluettes by Maggie Nelson? No. No, no, I don't know. It's this whole book that is just kind of excerpts on the color blue and exploring all aspects of the word blue. And. And. and the color blue and like where blue shows up in the world. And the way that they shape the term eyes full and the way that they explore it like how you stretch the way to say eyes full, but also everything that that term could mean really reminded me of that book and just stretching a single idea to the absolute limits.

I mean, I love when you can go super, super deep and just keep going deeper on what seems like the simplest idea. Did you hear Adrian Linker a little bit? Yes, completely. Yeah, I thought, boy, they ought to do something together. Yeah, I heard Adrian Lanker, and I heard a lot of the divine and spirituality in Dragon, New War, Mountain, I believe in you. That big thief album. Yeah, the big thief album. So Zohamba, Z-O-H-A-M-B-A, the song Icefall, and that's the title cut, yeah?

Yeah. And it is out, it looks like, on June 5th. Yeah. Wow, what a great pick. I got a couple more that I bet you're going to love. I'll start with Jasmine Bean. Do you know Jasmine Bean? I do know Jasmine Bean.

Okay, singer from London. I think if you listen to the stuff that they've put out over the past few years, a couple of albums, some singles and EP's, actually quite a bit of stuff just in the last few years. It's kind of all over the place sonically. Like sometimes it's just these gnarled, gritty, loud guitars. Sometimes it's heavy electronics. Sometimes it's even like dance beats. It's just kind of all over the place.

Well, Jasmine Bean just dropped a new single that, again, again, is totally different. It's called Darling, and we can just listen to it. Have you heard this yet? No, not yet. So we'll just listen to it, and you'll hear what I mean. It's just a very super sweet, kind of a catchy little piano ballad with kind of a late 60s Brit folk and pop vibe to it. Jasmine Bean, darling. What a sweet, sweet song. Isn't that just wonderful? Yeah.

It's so, do you hear, like, I'm hearing like a little, like Nico, like Nico the velvet underground, little, like that era too, sort of like late 60s, early 70s. It's just a song about loving someone who's been there for you, who's kind of gone through it with you and has always been by your side, had your back. Such a great earworm, too. Yeah. And I love the build. Yeah.

And especially how it kind of like peaks at the very, very end in a way that I kind of thought the song was going to have like a slow build and kind of live in like a sweetness. But it really gets so exciting in the end. And I love the lyric, come on galvanize me, my darling. What do you make of that? I don't necessarily think of the word galvanize as a very romantic idea. but it's so nice to have this idea of like you're so in love that you want to be like active together and you want to be exciting together and you want to push the other person to be exciting in the world. I want you to shock me.

Yeah. Shock me. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that I would have ever thought to compare Jasmine Bean to the band Keene. But I kept hearing Keene as I was listening to like, you listen to the top of this song. I walked along. Yeah.

An empty land I knew the pathway Like the back of my hand Yeah Oh my God, yeah Totally But it works It's like because there is this sort of

Almost surreal undercurrent to it all It's not just straight pop Totally, it's very dreamlike They have the same sweetness That I think makes Olivia Rodrigo shine In her music Of just this excitement about the world and about the possibilities of being so in love.

Yeah. Well, Jasmine Bean is still kind of coming up. They haven't completely broken yet. But definitely some rabid fans out there. Yeah. You know, huge TikTok following. Yeah. There's a Jasmine Bean wiki paid, you know, like what is it?

Like the Jasmine Wiki or whatever, you know, where it's like for all the rumors and, you know, speculation and stuff like that. One of those rumors is that they've got a new album coming up called Here Lies the Body of a Dreamer. That is a total rumor. There's no confirmation of that whatsoever. The only official word for now is that they've got this single darling and it's from an upcoming project. I love pop culture rumors. I really do too. I miss the days when there was no internet at all and you just, you had to believe them.

You know, all these urban myths and everything around artists. There were so many around bands like, you know, all the metal bands in the 70s and stuff, you know. I love learning about like really insane musical conspiracy theories where it's like when you just like completely pick apart a song in a way that an artist had no intention of like Boards of Canada. Paul is dead. Yeah, yeah. Is the patient zero in that. Yeah. Where do you want to go?

Okay. I want to do a song that I kind of thought you were going to pick. It's Drake, right? Yeah, it's Drake. Yeah. This song is by the Tui electronic duo Ear. It's a one-off. Oh, I love Ear, but I didn't know they had a new song.

Oh, awesome. Shout out Otis. Yeah. He sent it to me. It's called Ne plus Ultra. Is that French or Latin or what is that? I think it's Latin. It's Latin for nothing further beyond.

Are you videoing me right now? I'm sorry. I'm not going to lie to you. I think we're really crushing it on this episode. I think so too. I think we're playing some really, really good music here. I love you. I hadn't really heard anything since like late last summer or so. We played a song on the show and then I think they followed it up immediately. There was an album, their debut album. But I haven't heard anything since then. This is much more gnarled and harsher and sharper. It's very, very cool than what I was expecting. Yeah, I love how dense it is. It's such a patchwork of I feel like where they've been since the album. It really feels like they're taking us on a mood board of what a next project could be like if it's like. I heard like a cat meowing in there. I loved when when that voice comes in and it just goes like gone, gone forever. It's gone forever. It's very much like the books. If you know that, group the books. They're like very collage-based music. But in this case, it's like they've sharpened all of the edges and made them as just as tight as possible. I really appreciate how casual a lot of artists are recently, like especially like younger electronic music.

It's... Do you mean like just that it feels like they're just hanging out and this is all very organic and just kind of thrown together? Yeah. Yeah. It feels very organic. And also it feels like they're just putting out music as they make it. Lars Gautridge and I were just talking about this, in fact, on the show last week, about a favorite band of ours Black Swan Network, how back in the 90s they were throwing music together like this, you know, sort of as a collage, loose on the fly, friends hanging out in room. He actually thought we were hearing more of this in bands like ear.

Completely. I feel like I hear it in Bass Victim as well, which is like another electronic duo where they're just kind of putting out all of this really great, really dense patchwork music. It reminds me a lot of DJ Shadow's music of just like really incredibly sample rich and interesting sounds. So ear for people who don't know it. So it's a duo. Is it Yale Avton and Jonah Potts? Yes.

Yeah. And last I heard they were maybe they went to Bard College or something. I actually found them because they played my college when I was there, Vassar College, which is right next to Bard. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very cool. Great, fine. So just a one-off single for now. Mm-hmm. Just a one off.

All right, I've got one more than I want to play. And again, I don't know. I heard this and I thought this sounds very Dora core. I could be wrong. But it's got this kind of woozy, warped out of tune feel to it a little bit that I know you love. It's kind of moody. Yes, very Dora. It's a band called Evening Elephants. Do you know Evening Elephants? This is a duo from Los Angeles. And they've got a new album coming at the end of July. called wholeheartedly terribly sweet, wholeheartedly terribly sweet from evening elephants. The song I want to play from it, it's the latest single. It's called a digital touch. It's amazing how you just like totally clocked a song that I totally love. I wasn't sure. I was kind of trying to read the room while I was like, man, this is hitting so hard. I am just absolutely in this. And I looked over, I was like, I'm not sure if she's digging this or not. It's like heavy drums and like glitched out echoy vocals. And then in the middle it just gets like super weird with like screaming.

That's just, that's awesome. There's some about this like I don't know what I would call this. I mean, it's obviously it's got a little bit of hip hop, a little bit of pop, a little bit of rock. And it's all kind of smashed together. It's a very 90s sound. And like I said, it's familiar. But at the same time, I can't really come up with anyone else who sounds quite like this. It immediately reminded me of the song Dorman by Muramasa and Slow Tye that came out a few years ago.

That is just like this really heavy drumbeat and kind of like wandering, screaming vocals on top that you can see yourself raging to but also clubbing too as well. Yeah, there's definitely an element of that in this. Yeah. So these two guys, Sam Boggs and Brandon B. Leslie from Los Angeles, like they've been coming up playing backyard. parties and stuff like that and really kind of blowing up in the local scene there. I don't know. They're definitely on the rise and I really love what I've heard. They've got one other cut from this album, a new cut.

That's a lot quieter, a lot more reserved, kind of beautiful. Certainly compared to the chaos that you hear in this one. So real cool range to these guys. Yeah, definitely got my attention. Evening Elephant. That is totally just the type of music that I love. Yeah. Doricor.

Totally Doricor. So that album from Evening Elephant, is out July 31st, the very end of July. But Dora, I know you got one more you want to play. The last song that I picked feels out of my comfort range in terms of talking about music, which I think is maybe good that I wanted to pick it. It's a song from this jazz album that just came out by the band Nats. And the album is called A Great Day in Newcastle.

And the specific song that I want to play is called Carpet Doctor. And the whole album is produced by Jordy Greep, who was in Black Middy. And I do feel out of my wheelhouse when talking about jazz music. I feel like that's like where a blind spot that I have that I want to become better at. But the reason that I was so drawn to this album and this song in particular is how incredibly Nats, which is a duo, build this picture of Newcastle, which is where they live with these incredibly rich characters and this really cinematic image of a town. that they clearly really, really love. And is Nat's G-N-A-T-N-A-T? K. Okay.

Of course. K-N-A-T-S. Well, this is new to me. I don't know. I obviously don't know Nats. It was new to me too. I was a huge black MIDI fan. So I love all of the like spinoff projects that have happened since then.

Remind me of the song again? Carpet Doctor. Carpet Doctor. Thanks, Dora. This was awesome. Thanks, Robin. We played the best music that's ever been heard. I really think we did.

And you're listening to All Songs Considered from NPR Music. Let me tell you a story. The convict who gets sent down. He's made some mistakes, but he had a hard life. He gets out and bows never to come back. Set up a successful business and rejoins society. But he feels like he's never accepted the same. This is the story of the carpet doctor.