NPR Music - Sylvan Esso, Phoebe Bridgers, feeble little horse, more

Episode Date: July 21, 2026

We share our picks for the best new tracks out now, including the laid-back dystopia of Sylvan Esso’s “Concrete Glen,” an acoustic take on Phoebe Bridgers’ “Lost Boys,” the glitched-out chaos of feeble little horse and more.NPR Music’s Dora Levite joins host Robin Hilton.Support the show with a review on Apple or Spotify wherever you listen to podcasts. Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] artists and songs:(00:00) Intro(01:28) Sylvan Esso: “Concrete Glen”(07:49) feeble little horse: “DMT”(14:07) Phoebe Bridgers: “Lost Boys (acoustic)”(22:15) Snõõper: “RECESS”(26:50) The Olivia Tremor Control: “Garden of Light”(33:53) @: “Autosmile”   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 NPR Music. And the NPR Music Podcast is where we talk about the best new songs, best new albums, whatever else is happening in the music verse. We've got new episodes of All Songs Considered every Tuesday, Alt Latino every Wednesday, and we close out every week with New Music Friday. NPR Music, also where you will find the one and only door leaven. Hi, Robin. So happy to be here. You know, the last time you were on the show, I was like, okay, well, when can you come on again? And you were like, I think maybe two months? And I thought two months.

But you had the, there was the contest tour, the Tiny Desk Contest Tour. Yeah, I was on the road with the Tiny Desk Contest Tour. We were going across the country. We had 10 shows starting on the West Coast. We made our way all the way back to D.C. With our contest winners, Cure for Paranoia. The shows were so much fun. Robin, you came to a few of them.

So I was at the Boston show and the D.C. show. And yeah, the band, C. Perfect Paranoia. Awesome. And then we had little local bands. Yeah, we had two local bands who had submitted to the contest, who were really great picked by our NPR member stations in the place that we were at. I'm also so glad to be back. Well, two months have actually passed since the last time you're on. So you were right. A Grateful Nation welcomes you back. Always happy to have you redock at the mothership. We're talking best new songs of the week on this episode. Is that right if I kick us off with something?

Yeah. So this is something that just dropped. This is like breaking news. So Sylvan Esso, Emilia Meath, Nick Sam Bourne. They just announced that they've got a new album coming out. It's their first in four years. It's called Ow. Ow, Infinity.

Which I get it. Oh, Infinity. Ow, and then the Infinity. Ow! And the Infinity symbol. I pretty much spent my entire weekend listening to this first single that just dropped. I haven't heard it. I'm excited.

from the album. I've had it on constant repeat. It's called Concrete Glen. Concrete Glen. At the party, I fell down, down the stairs again, over my party dress and into concrete glen, the streetlets, the river, the honking, the birds, the men and people, fishes coming up for air. The come up sinking to the damn deep in the creek To pull me back Reaching it from me

When I'm smiling through the ice, It flows like reflecting off my teeth Baby, look around at your first time Or you like to sound at your first time Swallow you at your first time At the party I'm talking and I'm taking them Taking a sip

I Pulling my cigarettes Sticking to my life After Surrounded by my friends But in my eyes Reflected They shines out

concrete Couldn't you live in the vibe Of that song For the rest of your life Oh my God I feel like that's one of the best Sylvan SSO songs I've ever heard

It's incredible Yeah It is so good It's like It's kind of laid back It just has a super laid back vibe, but at the same time, there's just so much life in it. But it's also a little dystopian, too, because she's kind of singing about being at a party

and probably drinking and smoking too much. And she, like, trips and falls into this concrete glen. And a glen, in this case, like being like a valley. Yeah. But it's a concrete valley. So it's sort of invoking ideas and images around like global warming in the end of the planet. And we've paved over everything. and all our priorities are upside down.

The lyrics are so vivid. I love the kiss you on the mouth, swallow you down, concrete, Glenn. Yeah. Because I so much got from this that rather than like she was falling in, she was engulfing someone else. It was like a song of overwhelming desire and wanting to like kind of capture someone into your embrace, which I really like to.

Oh, interesting. I think the thing that I love most about, the song and so much of Sylvanessa's work is the contrast in it. Amelia Meets' voice is doing so much of the lifting in the song because the instruments are pretty spare, just that sort of broken backbeat, which is so cool. So cool. There's just a bass that kind of goes, boom, boom, just kind of slides up and down. And then it's her voice.

But, you know, heavier beats and sounds set against the beauty of her voice. I don't know. Did you recognize that vocal sample in it? I did. But did you place it? Do you know what it's from? Well, I cheated and I looked it up. Oh, okay.

Because I was like, oh my God, what is that? What is that? What is that? And it's Sigur Ross. Yeah, for sure. It's from, I think maybe their second album, one of the songs I can't pronounce. But yeah, that little boo-wee-oo. Yeah. It works so perfectly in here.

Yeah, it's so beautiful. Well, I have not heard the whole album, but I'm very excited to hear it. Hearing this song, they've got one other single that they dropped before this one. But Ow Infinity just announced the album is out on September 11th from Sylvan Nesso. Okay, so like you said, I haven't been on the show in a while. And I cheated and some of my songs are not from this week so much. It's not working out. Yeah, I'll go.

Why don't you go ahead and sign your time card when you leave? Okay, yeah. I'll move away. Well, anyways, this song is from one of my favorite albums that I've heard. in a while, and it actually came out at the end of May, so not too far away, the last few days of May, from the indie pop, indie rock band, Feeble Little Horse. Oh, I saw they, you know, I never ended up listening to it, and I saw they dropped this song. So, okay, I'm excited here.

Well, thank God I didn't leave the studio just now. Well, anyways, this is the last track on that album called Bit Not, and the song is called DMT. Wow, that is a take no prisoners. Just. And, you know, I feel like I've slightly misled you because the whole album is not like that. And it is a little bit more refined. And the heaviness, which I feel like Feeble Little Horse so often uses and like songs like, this is real, which was like their single from last year. Yeah.

Yeah, which is just like really loud and unpredictable. They've kind of swapped out for a glitchy. type of heaviness that's crunchy and less like guitar rock loud which is why I love their music so much which is why I was probably drawn to this yeah this song which is just a complete explosion yeah I think a lot of their music particularly like that song this is real you use the word unpredictable I think that's a word that I would have always used to describe them this one kind of stays in the same sort of lane throughout it does get a little bit bigger as it goes along and a little a heavier, but I like this glitched out direction. I'm always amazed when a band can take a sound

that is so abrasive and still make you want to sit in it. You know, like, I don't necessarily want to be yelled at when I'm listening to a song, you know, I'm not always reaching for punk or whatever, you know, but like they make this somehow infectious. I was thinking a lot about that when I was listening to the song. And I think the reason why that loudness works so well is because in the other moments where the lead singer Lydia is kind of, I feel like she's always like spinning a nursery rhyme to me. Yeah, yeah. And she's, her voice is so sweet and apathetic that it contrasts the loudness so well.

And you hear her like sweet, very almost monotone voice across all of their music. Yeah. And then so when it gets loud, you want to lean in more. So for people who don't know Feeba Little Horse, like this, they're from Pittsburgh? Yeah, they're from Pittsburgh. And they're slightly enigmatic to me. I feel like, I mean, this album came out as a surprise at the end of May. There was no teasing with singles or anything.

They canceled their last tour for their album, Girl with Fish, which was a really incredible album. And it's a trio, and I feel like a lot of their music really speaks to the young adult Gen Z experience of, Which I feel like a lot of indie artists are writing about now of like the frustrations with late stage capitalism and feeling burnt out by technology. And this song, DMT is death money tech. Oh, okay. I wondered if there's some psychedelic drug. That's also DMT. And I wondered if this was just about some bad trip or something like that.

But, you know, that tracks too. Just also a feeling of unreality or disassociation. blurring the lines between what is real and what isn't and not really understanding what is and what isn't. Yeah, even here, the song starts out with Lydia saying, I'm tuned to a key. It feels like she is the thing that she is fighting against, that she's turned into the technology.

So Feeba Little Horse in the song, DMT from the album Bitnought, that just surprised released at the end of May. Well, Dora, I'm sure if you're like me and apparently many, many, many, many millions of other people on the planet, you are on full-on Phoebe Bridger's watch. Yes, always, right? So, you know, a few weeks ago at the end of June, she announced her highly anticipated.

Highly. And long-awaited new album. It's finally coming out. It's called Lost Weekend. It's been like six years since your previous solo album, which I can't believe it's been that long. I can't believe it either. Right at the beginning of COVID is when it came out. Yeah, it was like, it called Punisher.

It came out in 2020. She's been doing a bunch of other stuff in the meantime. You know, she's got the Boy Genius Project. She's been touring a bunch. But her first solo album in six years, it's not coming out until mid-August. I can tell you that I have actually heard the album. I got it advanced. And I feel very confident saying that it is the best album she's ever done.

Oh, my God. I'm so excited. It is incredible. I cannot wait for people to hear it. And the one and only single we've gotten from Lost Weekend so far, it's been out for a few weeks now is Lost Boys. But she just released an acoustic version of that song. And I thought we'd give it a listen.

Yeah, I haven't heard the acoustic version. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's beautiful. Again, it's called Lost Boys. Oh, no, do a night, 55 to another life, where they make you cut your hair. With a rifle in your pig. I just scare is killed.

I pretend it was made. Never grow. Yeah. Never get to a dance from 87. I just find everything she does to be so magical. Yeah, especially this acoustic version. I feel like I hear the subtleties of her songwriting so much deeper when it's stripped back like this. I felt like when I heard the original version, I kind of, I didn't feel like.

like it was anything new for Phoebe Bridgers. It was like another beautiful, classic Phoebe Bridger's song. How does it compare to the rest of the album? Well, yeah, sort of like what you were saying about Fiebel Little Horse, like that one song doesn't necessarily reflect how the rest of the album is. This is maybe the most conventional, I'll say, song on the record. The rest of it gets pretty epic. I mean, it's really incredible.

Of course, it's also hard to hear, you know, a lot of musical adventure in an acoustic version. this. But this song really just her voice, her lyricism, her gift for melody are all in there. There's always such a great arc to her songs, too. There's like a build and a release. There's a story always sort of unfolding in ways that I really love. And honestly, and I know you think this too, that there are just few artists who can mix gloom and joy better than Phoebe Bridgers, like the light and the dark, like cruelty and kindness, you know, there are often references to violence in her songs, even as beautiful as they are.

I mean, if you find a way to get those two things to dance together as well as she does, I'm always going to be all in. I was thinking something very similar of. I feel like she is at her best when she is her most quiet and when she is going as far as she can, like in I know the end, the last track on Punisher, where it just ends in that huge scream,

which is something that I feel like we don't get from her that much, which I'm excited to hear that there's maybe more of that in this album. But in this song, when she does the counting, when she goes like one, two, three, who, that moment is my favorite moment of the song. It draws you in. So this version of Lost Boys, the acoustic version, isn't on the album. It's just a one-off.

But the album Lost Weekend is coming out on August 14th, so you don't have to wait too much longer to hear the whole thing. It is so good. I feel like the next. song that I have, which just came out last week, is the complete opposite of what we just listened to. Okay. But it is just as enchanting as I feel like Phoebe Bridgers often is.

You'll just, you'll hear it, but it is a very scrappy, repetitive school yard song. It just came out last week by the band Snooper, and this song is called Recess. That's incredible It's like a play for this century. You know, like it's not the kind of thing you would have heard when I was on the playground. No. It's just like it's almost like there's this synthetic AI almost kind of element to it. But I don't know if that makes sense.

Yeah, it totally does. It's also like this song is not what other snoopers songs sound like. No. It's normally very punky. And the vocals are kind of always that like high speed, playful chasing kind of sound, but under like a punk instrumental. It's also funny. This song I learned last night isn't part of an album yet, but it came with a video game.

Oh, that makes total sense. Have you played it or seen it? Yeah, I stayed up really late playing it. So what's the object of the game or what do you do? So Snooper, the band is known for their like really big puppets and like dolls. They're part of all of their visuals. And the game is that you're helping one of the dolls write the song. Oh, okay.

And so you have to get, it's kind of like Minecraft in the way where you have to collect materials in order to build different machines to help make synthesizers to create mixtapes for the doll. I love it. It's funny that I didn't know that about puppets. And then because I kept thinking of the Muppets while I was listening to the song. It's like, this is like if Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem were making music today. And they had to completely rethink, you know, what kind of sound would Dr. Teeth and

the electric mayhem? It'd be this song, I think, because it has that sort of Muppet playfulness, sort of, but kind of surreal. Yeah. Well, the song recess, just a one-off single now. Yeah. Snooper. As of now. Dora, you're hip.

You're pretty cool. That's what they tell me. So you probably know all about the Elephant Six collective, yeah? No. Oh, my God, Dora. Oh, this is amazing. All right. I told you I wasn't cool.

You always say that. Listen, you know neutral milk hotel for sure, right. Okay. Apples and Stereo, the another band of Montreal. Yes. You certainly know. All right. Yes.

All these bands are part of the Elephant Six Collective. Wow. Elephant Six Collective started in Louisiana and then kind of migrated to Athens, Georgia and Denver. Shout out Athens. Athens, Georgia in the early 90s. My all-time favorite band from that collective is a band called Olivia Trimmer Control. Do you know Olivia Trimmer Control? I do know Olivia Trimmer Control.

Lars Gotrich and I geek out about the collective in that band all the time. Well, anyway, the two main guys in Olivia Trimmer Control. Will Colin Hart and Bill Doss, they sadly died very young. Bill Doss was only 43. He died in 2012. And Will Cullen Hart, he was only 53. He died in 2023 just a few years ago. Before Bill Doss died in 2012, they were on the verge of releasing their third album, a new album. Of course, he passed away. It never happened. Then Will died. But the surviving members of the band have finally gotten the album across the finish line. They just announced it. It's called

the same place. This is the band's first new album in almost 30 years. 27 years since the last album. Wow. The song I want to play from it is called Garden of Light. So if you don't know Olivia Trimmer Control, this is very much their sound.

Paisley rainbows, you know, Technicolor, fields of flowers, super trippy and, you know, infinitely catchy to, like I said, first album in nearly 30 years. We actually covered the release of a new song that they had back in 2011. And at that time said, they've got a new album coming out next year. And then the whole thing just completely fell apart. But you know Olivia. Yeah, I do. And I feel like when it's a long awaited release, I feel like the first time you hear it can often feel

disappointing or tired, but that is not happening here at all. And I love how textured this song is. I love that little, like, it sounded like a laser gun in the distance towards the end over the like Garden of Light repetition. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when they recorded these songs, it was usually in one take, all, everyone in a room together, kind of stumbling over each other to trigger tapes and hit things in real time, all very analog. There's this great documentary called, A future history of the Elephant Six recording company came out a couple of few years ago that if you want to know more about the Elephant Six Collective and how they recorded all their stuff together. And a lot about Olivia Trimmer Control. You should totally watch that.

You know, this is only their third album, but everything they put out, those first couple of albums and they have a collection of singles, each of them are like a triple album. Yeah. Like 30 tracks or something. It's like so much great music to get lost in. Anyway, Olivia Trimmer Control, the album The Same Place Out October 23rd. But Dory, you've got one more that you want to play. I've got one more. Was that your last one?

That is my last one. Oh my gosh, you're going out on it. It goes so fast. It goes so fast. It's by a band that is quite literally hard to describe as their name is the at sign. What's the legal name for that term for that symbol? It's not ampersand. I thought it was ampersand, but it's not.

Sands the crisscrossing thing. It's not the at symbol? I feel like there's a legal scientific term. Legal scientific term. Let's just see. I'm going to use your words. What's the legal scientific? Oh, logogram.

A logogram. It is officially classified as a logogram. In scientific context, texts, it is sometimes referred to as the amper sat. Oh. Amper sat. Well, this is the band logogram. This is the band Ampersat. Which do we like for them?

Kind of like Ampersat. I like Ampersat as well. Yeah, all right. Well, anyways, this is the band Ampersat. So no one ever about this band, probably. They have a single that just came out a few weeks ago called Auto Smile. And the song is very cyclical. And it kind of reflects on a end of a relationship in a way that is just so haunting and beautiful and mysterious that I just keep coming back to this song.

All right. Well, we'll go out on this door. always a great hang. It's so great to have you back. So glad to be back. Always the best hang. And you're listening to All Songs Considered from NPR Music.