NPR Music - New songs to calm the nerves: 2025

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

Our fourth installment of music to slow the blood is a mix of all-new releases from this year, from the world-building, ambient sounds of Ozbolt and Klein to the hope, optimism and good company found in the music of Samia, Hand Habits, KeiyaA and more.NPR Music’s Dora Levite and Sheldon Pearce join host Robin Hilton.Featured songs and artists:1. Kieren Hebden & William Tyler: “Secret City,” from ‘41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s’2. Cassandra Jenkins: “Only Relaxation,” from ‘My Light, My Massage Parlor’3. David Cordero & anthené: “Humedal,” from ‘Let One Bird Sing’4. KeiyaA: “stupid prizes,” from ‘hooke’s law’5. Annahstasia: Unrest,” from ‘Tether’6. Klein: “it is what it is in d minor,” from ‘sleep with a cane’7. Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke: “The Spirit,” from ‘Tall Tales’8. Hand Habits: “Jasmine Blossoms,” from ‘Blue Reminder’9. Ozbolt: “Harkerville Coastal Trail,” from ‘Chasyng Drakens’10. Samia: “Pool (Stripped),” from ‘The Baby (5th Anniversary Edition)’11. The Armed: “I Steal What I Want,” from ‘The Future Is Here And Everything Needs To Be Destroyed’12. Stars of the Lid: “Goodnight,” from ‘Music for Nitrous Oxide (30 Year Anniversary 2025 Remaster)'Enjoy the show? Send it to a friend and leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] 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

Let's just start with a little box breathing. And this isn't anything that you know, like you don't have to be lying down to do this. You can be doing anything. Maybe you're on your bike right now. Maybe you're driving your car into work or something. Just go ahead and close your eyes. Take a slow, deep breath. You're not holding your breath.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I forgot about the top of the box. I can't tell you how many times I try to get my kids when they're freaking out. I say, okay, come on, let's take a just, we're going to take a deep breath together. Come on. And they won't do it, right? They just won't take that breath. And it eventually devolves to me saying, take a deep breath.

Well, it's all songs considered. I'm Robin Hilton here with Dora Levitt, Sheldon Pierce. This is the fourth installment in our ongoing mixes or playlists of songs to calm the nerves. We started it last year with songs to calm the nerves. And then we did more songs to calm the nerves. even more songs to calm the nerves. Those were all a mix of new and old stuff. So for this installment, we're going to focus entirely on new stuff.

Something that I find calms my nerves in music is a song that will just push me forward, whether that's with repetitive noises or just momentum will just kind of propel me forward. And it can be a long song, and by the end I don't even realize how long it was because I'm just there. And a song that I feel like really does that for me is Secret City by Kieran Hebden and William Tyler. I feel like with songs that make you calm a lot of times, I immediately go to like, oh, it has to be spa music. And this feels more to me, like, optimism music rather than spa music. I feel like spa music can kind of sometimes just be nothing and calm. And this feels like it's looking towards something greater. Yeah, this song just sort of like steadily keeps growing.

and growing and growing, and then by the end you feel full. It's like there's this riff in the foreground that is like drawing your immediate tension, but you have the wall of noise in the back just like shifting and reverberating, and it's really pulling you in a very specific direction that feels purposeful. To your point about spa music, a lot of that stuff does not work for me. I don't like ambient music that is just like existing in the background. that has no immediate purpose in like poking at your brain, that stuff doesn't really work for me even as a calming effect.

But something like this that is really drawing you somewhere, that has real power to settle you. Yeah, I really like how you put that. This is what do you call it optimist music? Yeah. Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. Something that is not just calming you down, but making you feel better just about everything.

That's great. So Kieran Hebden, William Tyler, Secret City is the song from the album 41 Longfield Street, late 80s. That came out on September 19th. Yeah, when you told me you wanted to do this show, there was immediately a song that popped into my head. It's by the folk pop artist Cassandra Jenkins. It's called Only Relaxation. I think the name pretty much tells you about the direction that she's headed here. Yeah, Cassandra Jenkins is a, she's a professional.

perennial favorite whenever we talk about music to calm the nerves. She has, this is an instrumental piece. Actually, it's the whole album. The whole album is, isn't it? Yeah, so this is from, well, to the whole spa thing. This album is called My Light, My Massage Parlor. She's done spoken word and sung pieces that are also incredibly calming. This is nice, too.

Yeah, I mean, last year, Jenkins released an incredible album called My Light, My Destroyer. This is a companion piece to that record. that's like sort of playing in its backyard. It's got like little piano sketches and flourishes on songs from the original album. But this is like a standalone cut that really feels like it's playing directly into the massage parlor ideal. You've got the croaking frogs in the background. The nature sounds just sort of twinkling on the back as she gently caresses those keys and lulls you into a trance. So do you think that she's being ironic at all with this?

I do think there's something a little facetious about it. So does that not take you out of the moment? You know what I mean? It doesn't because I think the music is so beautifully spellbinding. I also think because she adds in those city sounds as well, especially in the first track in this album and the last track where you walk into the massage parlor and you leave, it is kind of nice to be able to step into another person's life too when you're at your most anxious. And you can kind of be like, okay, I'm now this person walking into a mom.

massage parlor. And it doesn't matter that I'm starting from outside because I can just have a new life. Yeah, there's a little act of world building that is taking place here that I can really appreciate. I get sucked into it. Yeah, world building is really important to me when I'm reaching for music to calm my nerves. When you add in like the ambient sounds, found sounds, things like that, that really transports me. And you're going to hear it in this first thing that I want to play. All my picks that go around are very sort of traditional. They're very ambient. I was like, this is drone music 101 from Robin.

Yeah, a lot of drone music, a lot of ambient music, electronic music. This first artist I want to play is David Cordero. He's a composer and a producer from Spain. And he has put out several albums this year. The one I want to focus on is an album called Let One Bird Sing. And the song I want to play from it is called Ume Dahl. What do you think, Doors, is this moving you forward, even though it's sort of amorphous and kind of drifting.

It's like you're on a walk with this person. Yeah. I think because it is exactly like you're on a walk with this person and you can hear every single step, it does move me forward a little bit. Yeah. It really is the supreme world building with the nature crackling and the steps. Yeah. It's beautiful.

Yeah. So Umeidaul means wetland in Spanish. So I think that's maybe some of the sounds that you're hearing in there. I mean, honestly, ambient, amorphous, drifty, music from the ether, it's just about all I can handle this year, honestly, Sheldon. Okay. I mean, my senses are on just high alert, and everything is exaggerated. Everything I hear, everything I see, feels like it has an edge to it. And this is just about my speed this year, I think.

Yeah, well, I mean, I can understand that. There is both an openness and a sense of quiet to this that feels like maybe the best of both worlds in terms of white noise and nature sounds being the default sleep setting for a lot of people. And also synth music being this very pacifying sound bath quality type music. This settles like right in that perfect middle ground where I think it's, engaging enough that you do feel like you are a part of something here, but there is like such a great expanse that you can get lost in it as well. Yeah, I agree. I mean, that's what I want. I want to be taken out of my head for a while. And I don't know, it just kind of sounds like you're on a walk with a really good friend and you've known each other for so long. You don't even have to

say a word to each other. Yeah. You can just kind of be out in that space. It's really, really beautiful. Best I can tell, David Cordero, has released a lot of music this year. I counted five albums, multiple collaborations. There's been some singles, too. He did this album with the Canadian producer. I think I'm saying this right, Athena, A-N-T-H-E-N-E. And really beautiful. Again, it's called Let One Bird Sing. Came out just earlier in October on October 23rd. Dora, we're back to you. I was thinking about this before this episode. I was like, what makes me Chiller. And it's listening to music that like reminds

me that someone else is also anxious and someone else is also feeling that burden of humanity, I guess. Yeah. And a song that I really see that in is Stupid Prizes by Kia. Play these games

and I can't play to spades because I'm winning stupid prizes and I can't use the lies of the same old lies I try to stay alive. Tell me how I'm supposed to drive when all I know is to survive and all I know is to lie on night. Tell me how I'm supposed to drive when all I know is to survive and all I know is to lie on life. I've been around the way from Antigone, from Antigone to the south of Spain, still I claim the pain.

It's laid on the beach was the chema and me on the salty waters of the Adriatic sea But still our clouds I see It completely washes over me unless maybe this is kind of a little selfish unless I feel like it's like targeting a certain part of myself That's making me feel nervous or anxious And so I want to feel like anxiety met with anxiety Cancels it all out That's basic math Right, exactly.

Yeah. Exactly. Well, there is something also about this song in particular that is like almost hymnal. Yeah. Totally. The melodies, the harmonies that are sort of reverberating behind her, it's almost like an Elysian paradisical, like feeling. Yeah. And so you are instantly drawn to that and calmed by that.

But how I'm supposed to thrive when all I've known is to survive, when all I've known is to survive, when all I've known is how to rely on I, like, there's comfort in knowing that someone else is going through what you're going through. Totally. Like, just really feeling the trudge of the day-to-day grind and, like, trying to make their way through. And the music you're hearing under, I was reading is Percy Faith's music. Oh, okay. Was a composer who wrote things like the theme from the summer place and Romeo and Juliet and

all that really quintessential kind of like. like American, but also like easy listening too. He made a lot of easy listening music and the total wash of his music really adds to the feeling. Whenever I'm listening to this song, I feel like I'm in like a sensory deprivation tank. I think that the connective tissue here is that whatever you're listening to, you're looking for some sort of reset. You're looking for some perspective. And whether that perspective comes in a bunch of, you know, ambient tones and nature sounds because it puts you in a very specific environment. if it's hearing a story from someone else's life that gives you perspective,

the end result is sort of the same. In the same vein as Doris last pick, I want to go to a song where I'm sort of drawn to the idea of it, the shared perspective with the artist. It's a song called Unrest by the soul singer Anastasia. So good. That's insane. I mean, the second her voice comes in, Everything in the world is better.

It's, it's, the sound of that alone is enough to sort of pacify you. I mean, the guitars love lovely too. That's too, yes. There's, there's something almost very like Nick Drake about the guitars. And then her voice has drawn comparisons to Nina Simone and Tracy Chapman. I think there's something a bit more fragile and delicate about it. The way she sort of inches out notes, it's, there's almost a whisper quality. to them. That is just so striking. The whole album, which is called Tether, really beautiful,

full of this kind of music. But I was drawn for this show to unrest because the song itself is about sort of finding comfort in someone despite the noise of the outside world. There's such warmth here. You really feel closeness to this song. It made me think about a lullaby. It made me think about parents singing a lullaby, it just warmed my heart. Yeah, so beautiful. Wow, I can't believe I missed this record when it came out. It came out in June on June 13th. Her debut album, yeah?

Yes, the first she's done. I thought, wasn't she in that, was she in a Kendrick video? She is. She's also in the video for Kendrick Lamar and Cizz's Luther. Yeah, that's right. Okay, well, I've got another, I guess you would call it ambient or electronic piece. I know. All of my picks this week really,

fall into that category. This is from an artist that goes by the name Klein, a British musician and producer. She's put out two albums this year. She had one in February called 13 cents and one at the top of October called Sleep with a Cane. That's the one that I want to play a song from. This is a cut called It Is What It Is in D minor. I mean to me, if you want to get out of your head, this one sort of hypnotizes you. I mean, the longer you listen, the more, you know, reality, you know, just disappears and you're kind of floating while you listen to it. Have you heard this album? Have you guys listened to it?

I mean, some of it gets pretty weird and kind of creepy. Yeah. Which I was thinking, you know, I like a little bit of creepy in my relaxing music because it's sort of like when you're inside under a blanket during a thunderstorm or something. It makes me feel really cozy. Yeah. It can't be too creepy, but just like a little bit of a, yeah, a little bit of a threat of that in this music. really beautiful, I think.

It's funny you say that because I find this kind of thing more invigorating than calming, but I was thinking, you know, maybe that's semantics, like, a distinct, two distinct effects that, like, lead you to the same place. In the end, you feel refreshed by both processes. I mean, there's something really sweeping and echoy about this one in particular that feels like, you know, hearing a voice on the wind and trying to follow it to its source. There's something almost out of body about the experience of listening to. to it. But I mean, sometimes that's exactly what you need. Yeah, I don't want to be

me anymore when I'm listening to music. I want to get as far away from me as possible. Robin, is there something we need to talk about? Life is just life and you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you. Don't you also feel pretty content, though, listening to this song? I feel like even in the title it is what it is in D minor, As I'm listening, I'm kind of just like, yeah, my life is my life, and now I get to hear it in a song. It is what it is. It is what it is, but now it's in D minor. Yeah.

Well, I mean, it's, I think she's got a pretty good sense of humor, too. I mean, just calling, the moment you add the key that a song is in, it instantly rises to some grander level. Yeah. There's a seriousness. Yeah, there's a serious, like, such and such in F-sharp minor or whatever. But it's so amorphous and such a wash of sound that pegging it to any specific key, I mean, maybe it's in D minor. It doesn't sound like it to me, but it's kind of comical. And then calling the album, Sleep with a cane.

I mean, the older you get, the worse you sleep. And the idea of needing a cane when you're in bed, when you're unconscious in bed, is, I don't know, that's pretty hilarious to me. So the song, again, it is what it is in D minor from Klein and her album. sleep with a cane, just came out October 1st. Robin, I feel like whenever I'm on the show, I'm always talking about like a monotonous drone or really just repetitive electronic music, and I'm not going to change that. I'm not changing that for you.

I'm not changing that for you. I don't care. But I was saying about how I like monotonous music to push me forward and that I find it really calming. I feel like it's at its best when it's similar to the Kieran Hebden and William Tyler song where it's an electronic artist and like a folk rock person too. Yeah. And so I want to play another song that's like that, The Spirit by Mark Pritchard and Tom York.

Dorie, to your whole idea of looking for some optimism too. I mean, this whole song's about defiant joy. Completely. And it's about passing that on to another person too and sharing that. And I think that's so beautiful and that's so hopeful. And the way that the chords resolve on top of this steady beat feels like it feels like it lights up my eyes. I also feel like this must be what they play during tapping therapy or EMDR. Hmm. Have you ever heard of that?

What's tapping therapy? I don't know if it. It's this idea that if you, and I might get this wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's this idea that when if you experience a repetitive tapping and you can do it through like shifting your eyes back and forth in emotion, you can rewire the way that you process traumatic experiences. Oh, I have heard about that. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know about that.

I was going to say, I think strobing effects are already just like a really settling sensation. That tapping sensation as it goes on in this song feels like really steadying. It's like a steadying force. And then the whole thing sort of like breaks out into this really lovely string arrangement at the end, which is, it feels like this grand pay. off. Well, Dorah, one thing that I've come to realize as we're playing through all this music is, you want to feel better and I want to be unconscious. Like, you want to, you still want to exist in the world and be aware. You just want to feel good while you're in it, and I just want to be anesthetized. Still feel, you'll still feel better, maybe. I'll feel a lot better maybe when I come out of this.

Sheldon, how do you want to feel? I don't know. I know exactly how you want to feel with one of these picks. No, we're not there yet. No, are we not there yet? Not quite, We're holding on to that. I'm still thinking about navigating or trying to find joy in a world that feels increasingly joyless. There's another song that I brought. It's by the band Hand Habits. And it's kind of about like there's an ever-crushing state of the world news bulletin blaring in your pocket device every single moment of every single day.

And it can be hard to get away from that. but like it needs to be an intentional choice. And on one of their songs, Jasmine Blossoms, it's about taking that back for yourselves. And so I would love to hear that. Where's this taking you? Well, I guess it's hard for me to, like, believe in escapism because I believe active participation in your community

is like the most important thing you can do. do and helping another person through whatever they're dealing with is what calms me, honestly. And so when I listen to this song, I am just like constantly thinking about the idea that terrible things are always happening. They may feel like they're happening more now than ever, but they've always happened. And it is important to sort of balance that realization with little moments taken to yourself. And this song feels like such a beautiful attempt to find that balance. That is so beautiful.

When I hear them kind of wail, try, it makes me also want to try and want to join them in that act. It is nice to want to join someone in like community action and realization and just like try. I really want to play more ambient music. to get away from everything. And, you know, Sheldon, I'm going to have to ask you to actively participate in escaping with me from everything if you're up for it. I'll watch you escape from the far. All right. As I drift off like a helium-filled balloon floating away.

This is from the artist that goes by the name Osbolt, O-Z-B-O-L-T. He's a German Croatian electronic composer. Put out a new album in the spring called I think it's pronounced Chasing Dracons. It's spelled C-H-A-S-Y-N-G, chasing and Dracons is D-R-A-K-E-N-S, Chasing Dracons. And the song I want to play from it is called Harkerville Coastal Trail.

You hear the surf coming in and out, the steady wind blowing. It's a longer piece. If you listen to it, eventually night falls, you hear crickets. I don't know, I really like the image. that I got talking to you just before playing the song of me floating away like a helium-filled balloon. So that's what I'm doing right now. I'm floating over the beach watching all of this.

It's very transporting for me. Do you think of calm as a place that you are trying to get to in private? Hmm, that's a good question. I think so. Okay. Yeah. What would it be for you? I think of calm as a place that I, any place that I can find peace. And a lot of times, for me, that's in the company of others, just away from the chaos of whatever's lingering outside, be it work or the politics of the day, what have you. Just like finding solace in community, I think. But I do really appreciate this. I mean, I think about, have you seen the show The Good Place? Oh. And just like waking up in the chair and you are in the good, This is like how I imagine the actual Good Place Resets music sounding.

You pop up into this empty space and it's just you. You think you'd be calm then? Yes. I don't know. What is happening? Like, where am I? One of the all-time greatest shows. I have never sobbed so hard in my life as I did at the end of that show.

Yeah. I was reading a little bit about the album as a whole. And the idea that when they were making this album, they wanted it to be a chance experiment. There was a quote that said, what happens when you leave a harp in a field and let the wind pass over it? Which I thought was really beautiful and really apt. It feels very spiritual and just kind of like things are happening out of our control. Osbalt is the artist Harkerville Coastal Trail, is the name of the song from the album Chasing Drackens. that came out April 18th.

I want to play Samia. An older song that came out five years ago that has been reimagined and completely stripped back, largely inspired by her tiny desk performance. The song is called Pool, in parentheses, stripped. And it's from the album that just came out September 5th, the fifth anniversary reissue of the baby. is bigger than my head and then you dove in and then I said I'm afraid that I need men

he said need me then that he's scared with your mouth up in the air and try the water through this to be kids Yeah, I love Samia. She's amazing. Her voice is so beautiful. The voice that you hear at the beginning, though, is her grandmother's. I wondered what that recording was. It's her grandmother speaking in Arabic.

And hearing your grandmother speak to you is just the ultimate lullaby. Yeah. And this whole song about the passage of time and trying to be present while feeling the anxieties of the future. I mean, like, talk about listening to another person, talk about their anxieties, make you feel seen. Yeah. It's so beautiful and so poignant. Yeah, I think the strip down nature of this version, too, is like really lending it something raw and visceral that really just speaks to me. Yeah, the original version of this song is pretty dreamy, too, but it's washed out and all this reverb.

And this one's just, everything's just kind of more in the clear. raw, like you said. So it ends up being more intimate and more transporting. It feels like you're much closer to it all. Yeah, there's no distance between you and her as a performer, which leads to almost what feels like a dialogue, even though she's the only one speaking. There is a connection being made. And I think that is the power of it. So the stripped version of pool, pool stripped is from the fifth anniversary edition of the baby that came out on September 5th. And, Dorrie, you mentioned the Tiny Desk concert that she did. She did that song at the Tiny Desk.

And that version is also on the album. I think there may be three versions of this song on this new deluxe. Perfect. That's a great song. Anniversary edition. Yeah. So are we doing this, Sheldon? It's time.

You talked about the joy of getting a good scream out. Is that what's happening with this pick here? This next pick is certainly along those lines. I mean, when I'm feeling anxious, white noise and ambient music don't really cut it. I need to vent. I need to rage. And that is part of the effect of this song by the hardcore band The Armed.

It's called I Steal What I Want. And I'll just say if you don't want to hear a loud rock music right now because of everything else we play and just skip ahead 30 seconds. We'll pick up the conversation. So calming, not so much for me, but cathartic, for sure.

Are they the same thing for you? Yeah, I think there's really no difference in the way that I experience things. This song is from an album called The Future is Here and everything needs to be destroyed. And there is like a real rage room quality about the song that invokes like the fire in me that needs to be put out.

There's just something about the thrash of it really feeling like it's getting all the jitters out. and then you can be normal and have the reset that is required. It's a different kind of calm, I think, and it's not one that comes without agitation, obviously. But for me, there is nothing more refreshing. I really also feel that. I feel like any sort of anxiety or nerves that I feel and I push through, there still needs to be a moment where I just, like, have a great scream

and just kind of, like you said, a rage room. It's a great scream, and this really does that. No, I think that's totally legit. I mean, I think, yeah, again, it's the reset. You're looking for some sort of reset, and if this is what you need to do to reset, and then suddenly you feel a lot better, I get it. So we've got a songs to Calm the Nerves playlist.

It's where we've been putting all of the music that we feature in this series, all in a single playlist. I think we're up to maybe four hours of music on that single playlist. We'll add the arms in there. It's easy to hit skip if it's harshing someone's mellow and all the other stuff that you heard on this episode

in that playlist. If you just search for NPR and Apple Music or Spotify, you'll find it. I'm going to take us out on something that is new only in that it was just re-released and remastered for a 30th anniversary edition of the original album came out 30 years ago from Stars of the Lid. and the album, Music for Nitrous Oxide.

The band, Stars of the Lid, if you listen to this show very much at all, you have heard us talk about them a lot. For me, they are synonymous with music to calm the nerves, the gold standard of calming music. Adam Wilsey and Brian McBride. Brian McBride passed away suddenly in 2023. I think he was only 53 years old.

And Adam Wilsey, his musical partner, said that since his passing, Adam Wilty wanted to revisit the Stars of the Lid discography and sort of bring new life to it. He went back. Some of the early recordings like this were super lo-fi. So he went back, cleaned them up,

remastered them, and it gives me a perfect excuse to play something from this album. The song I want to take us out on is called Good Night. The song, to me, out of all of the ambient music that we played today, this one sounded the most like silence to me, which I thought,

was really cool to be able to pinpoint a sound as closest to silence. I feel like at the beginning of the episode, we were talking about the noise that's always in your head, and I learned recently that that's not. Some people don't hear that all the time, and some people hear silence, which was crazy. But this feels like what that could be. There's something so intentional about the stars of the lid stuff,

in particular. It really does feel like they are operating the knobs inside your brain and putting it to all the right settings. I love the image of them twisting the knobs in my brain to get the settings just right. That is definitely what's going on in this music. So the song, Good Night from Music for Nitrous Oxide. Thanks so much, Dora Levitt, Sheldon Pierce. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for having me. And for NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's All Salky. considered.