NPR Music - The Contenders, Vol. 19: Neko Case, Asher White, caroline, more

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Hear the songs we just had to share this week. NPR Music’s Dora Levite joins host Robin Hilton to update our running list of the year’s best songs, with head-spinning, shape-shifting wonders from Asher White, transcendent ambient sounds from Early Fern, the first new solo album from Neko Case in eight years and more.Featured artists and songs:1. Asher White: “Beers with my name on them,” from ‘8 Tips for Catastrophe Living’2. Neko Case: “Wreck,” from ‘Neon Grey Midnight Green'3. caroline: “Total Euphoria,” from ‘caroline 2’4. Sturle Dagsland: “Hugging Horses,” from ‘Dreams And Conjurations’5. Model/Actriz: “Doves,” from ‘Piourette’6. Early Fern: “Teasel,” from ‘Wetland Interiors’Weekly reset: Horses are really having a momentEnjoy the show? Share it with 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

I'm a little bit nervous. You're a little nervous. You should be. Yeah, I am. This could kind of make or break your entire career. I know, that's what I'm feeling. And all I do all the time is listen to podcasts. That's like literally all I do and they're all comedy podcasts and I feel like they're my best friends.

So I'm like, hmm, I wonder who's going to want to be my friend after listening to this. Oh, Dora. I don't know. Let's just try to get through the show. Well, it's all songs considered. NPR's long-running discovery and serious music nerdam podcast. I'm Robin Hilton. And I'm here with one of the coolest people I know and one of my favorite humans. Well, at least on the NPR music team. It's true. I think you're super cool.

Thanks, Robin. Dora Levitt is here. How long have you been at NPR? Since January. Just this January. Yeah, January 6th was my first day. And you weren't an intern or anything. You started like as a, what? With the contest.

The Tiny Desk contest. Yeah. Did you know that we used to have a really robust internship program here? I did, because every single person I asked how they started at NPR, they said, oh, I was an intern. Oh, right. I was a fellow. There was a time, all songs considered had its own intern. We had three a year.

And I was thinking, you know, those earliest interns we had the very first ones, they're pushing their 50s now, Dora. No way. So let's think about it. If you do the math, the show's 25 years old. The first interns we had were, let's say, in their early to mid-20s. Wow. 25 years ago, they're in like 40s now. You know, some of them have probably had hip replacements.

Yeah, that's like that. My parents age. Yeah. Oh, God. Really? Well, Dora, kidding aside, I wanted to have you on the show for a long time because one of the things that I clocked very early on with you is I totally vibe with the music that you love. Thanks, Bradley. Our tastes and music really overlap really well, and you're always turning me on to really great stuff.

So what do you want to start with? I want to start with a song that I'm actually addicted to, and it's all that I talk about, and it's beers with my name on them by Asher White. That song The stars The casino Counting cars The business spins

Eternal Brew You hear Everybody's This song This song Is that song is like a study In how much Awesome

Can you cram Into one track Right Incredible It just never stops moving forward I first listened to it And my jaw was on the floor

And then I text it Basically Everybody that I know Right And I was like Have you listened to this song, it feels like what it is to run around outside. I thought you're going to say what it feels like to have ADHD, which I do have ADHD. And, you know, my wife could not be more opposite.

And she just doesn't get it. And I try to explain it to her. And it's like, I want to just play this song and say, this is actually what it's like. This is the sound of my brain at any given moment. Yeah. The church bells organ that come in with the techno and the. pop punk, it's so everything all at once and also just works together and moves and builds off itself. It's amazing. There's also that really cool breakdown about halfway where it's actually

I think the first real significant shift that the song takes and there's this little sort of jazzy hi-hat or something in it. You're like, well, wait a minute, where is this going? And then it just gets wilder and wilder and it's so restless and twitchy and oh, incredible. Completely. So tell us about Asher White. She's an artist. She's a writer. She's a sculptor as well, which I thought you can kind of really see with this song, because it is really built out and kind of carving space within itself with all of the different breaks and how you do get like the jazzy bits that kind of allude to the beginning, more pop rock section.

But still is this really heavy techno. Yeah. So the album this is from is called Eight Tips for Catastrophe Living. I mean, just that title alone is enough to get me interested. And then you've got a song called Beers with My Name on them. Also more than enough to get me interested in it. But then what a payoff. Wow, Asher White.

Very good. Are you a Nico Case fan? Do you, are you? I can't say that I am. I mean, I know who Nico Case is. and her name kind of just swirls around in my algorithms. Yeah. But I've never really spent the time listening.

So I think of her very much as a Gen X artist. She's just as relevant now as ever and still making great music. But, you know, she can go a very long time between albums. Her last one was eight years ago. And I think that once you start bumping up against a decade or so, you know, letting nearly a decade pass without putting anything out, you're like halfway to an entire generation that maybe hasn't even heard you. But Nico Case is back now with a new solo album.

Like I said, it's her first in eight years. She did do a couple of new pornographers albums in between. So she's been busy. But man, this new solo album, it has totally knocked me out. It's called Neon Grey Midnight Green. And I want to play this cut from it called Rec. Call me to this whole world that would play. Nico Case just popping up here to remind us that she is one of our all-time great songwriters, I think.

She just does, I don't know, elegance so well. Her songs are elegant to me, and they're soaring and euphoric, but also just full of so much wisdom. I don't know. These are all things that she does, I think, better than most. Completely. That line, do I look like the sun to you, blazing freckles on your face? That's gorgeous.

And the swell at the beginning that it strings, right? The string that's so chaotic. It's like chaotic. I actually wrote down and I was like, now that got my attention. I was like, those strings are amazing. And the strings with the talk of the sun and meteors and fireworks, it's all just so, so grand. Yeah.

I think the music lands so well just on its own. But also thematically, I really love what she's talking about on this song and really across the whole record, which is it's really just about love. and the love you have for your friends and the people who come into your life and help shape you and make you who you are, losing those friends over time. It's so beautiful and it really does make you remember how big of a feeling love is. And because the song is so huge, it makes you realize how powerful that feeling is. This whole record, I think, is so good from Nico Case, Neon Grey, Midnight Green. it is out September 26th.

All right, we've got some more music that we want to play, plus your weekly reset coming at the end of the show. So be sure to keep listening for that. Also, if you want to support NPR and all songs considered, just tell a friend about the show, share it with somebody, and leave us a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Dora, what else you love in this week? You know, those strings in that Nico Case song,

It really reminded me of another song that came out this year with the same build of strings and guitar. It's called Total Euphoria by Caroline off of their sequel, Caroline 2. But I hear that euphoria that you're talking about. I love how off balance everything is. Right. And so disjointed. Honestly, the first time I listened to this, I thought I accidentally had a couple of things, different things, playing at the same time. I kept stopping like, oh, is something playing on YouTube the same time I'm playing this on my computer?

Oh, no, this is the song. And then there was another moment, you know, where it just suddenly goes really, really gritty. There's that, whoa. Totally. It sounds like all of the different pieces of the song are kind of like fighting with each other to try and be first. Yeah. Yeah. So have you ever seen Caroline live?

I'm wondering if you saw them do this live by chance. I wish. Yeah. I asked because I think this would be a really hard song to pull off. off live because I'm counting maybe four different rhythms going on. They're like two different guitars doing different things. There's the vocals doing its own thing and then the drums are totally doing its own thing. Yeah.

Something that I really love about this song is how sparse the lyrics are and how they repeat with the rhythmic guitar and the drums. And I think it just, it builds so beautifully. You know what this actually reminded me of? Do you listen to the microphones or Mount Erie? Do you know? The microphones, yeah. Yeah, so, and they're both Phil L.

From projects. Maybe something about the vocals, the way they sort of float in all that chaos. And also, I think the contrast, that there's this sense of beauty in all of that chaos. Do you hear that? You know what I'm talking about? I really do. I think the fact that there are all of these parts, like we were talking about fighting together, but they do still work together is kind of where that beauty lies.

Good stuff. So that's from the album Caroline 2, which if you couldn't figure it out was the band's second album. And that is already out, came out in the spring. Well, I want to play what is a new discovery for me. And I think maybe a discovery for you as well. Sterl Dagsland. Yeah, I'd never heard of Sterl Daxland. And I love him. Yeah. Incredible. An artist from Norway. One of the most remarkable voices I've ever heard. I mean, for real, I'm not just throwing that out there. This is not hyperbole. I completely agree with you. The music is very strange, but incredibly powerful, I think. He's about to release a new album called Dreams and Conjurations, and this is a cut from it called Hugging Horses. Incredible, right? Amazing.

The word that immediately came to me when I listened to the song was just yearning. I was like, there's so much yearning in the song. Yeah, definitely an ache for something. I don't know what, exactly, but. Can't understand. So I wrote to his publicist and asked, you know, is there any auto tune or anything on this? And they said, no, this 100% his voice. And he can get incredibly low, too.

So his range, his vocal range is just off the charts. I mean, it's incredible. Like, you listen to the very opening of that song. It sounds to me like the only way you could do it is with autotune, but that's his natural falsetto. I hear some like FK8 twigs in there, definitely Bjork a lot. Kate Bush, I think, a little bit. A little bit of Grimes, too. Oh, yeah, Grimes.

I was thinking the knife was a good reference point. Yeah. If you really like them, I think you would love this. I do, yeah. Very strange. Some of this stuff, you know, his voice almost sounds like yodeling or something, which I never would think, oh, yodeling, let's put it on. Crank it up.

speak for yourself. But it is just so transfixing, and there's something in it that just really gets the blood going too. Completely. Yeah. Yeah. Even the title hugging horses, I feel like I do hear like a gallop in there a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Horse is having a real moment right now. Yeah. Have you noticed this? Yeah, I know we've talked about this. All of my favorite bands recently have been horse-related.

So there's horse vision, also a duo. from Sweden. There's feeble little horse, which I've played on the show. Feeble little horse is great. I love Feeble little horse. I just went through my emails. It's just like what notes have I gotten from bands. Lucky horse red, horse lords. I'm not making this up, Dora. Iron horse. Horse. Horse. I was about to say horse jumbled. Do you like horse jumper of love? You know, I haven't listened to much of horse jumper of love. Mouthful. But I keep seeing them everywhere and I keep being like, wow, I need to send us to Robin, a new horse. Yeah, we should do a...

There's also a sugar horse, the band Sugar Horse. There was a music festival in the UK this year called Acid Horse, not to mention the Cleo Reed song. Always the horse, never the jockey, and the heart attack man song. Joy Ride, the pale horse. We could do probably hours just on horses. News you can use, Dora. Yeah, horses everywhere.

So Stirl Dagsland is the artist again, and he makes music as a duo with his brother, just the two of them. Best I can tell, they've been doing this for a long time, like more than a decade now, but this is just their second album, Dreams and Conjurations. It is coming out October 10th. All right, we still have your weekly reset coming up at the end of the show, so keep listening for that. But Dora, I know you've got another cut you want to play.

Yeah, so as you can probably tell, there's nothing I love more than, and I say this lovingly, a monotonous drone. and I don't think anyone does a monotonous drone like model actress, especially in their newest album, Pirouette that came out earlier this year. And my favorite song is Doves. You said Monotonous Dron.

I was thinking of something maybe more ambient sounding, but like it's a rhythmic drone that just keeps hammering the song. Yeah. It's almost abrasive, but because of all of the beautiful, almost delicate imagery that the lead singer Cole is talking about. They really do balance the delicate and precious lyrics and ideas

with these huge mechanical sounds, which is awesome. I was thinking Radiohead, you must be a Radiohead fan. Yeah, totally. Especially towards the end there. But also, you know, we've been looking back at the past 25 years of music played on all songs considered. We're up to the period of the early to, mid-2000s or so, you know,

four, five, six around then. This feels like something that we could have been talking about from that time. It reminds me a little bit of what LCD sound system was doing around then, you know, where it has this almost relentless beat like that, just rattling through the whole song, but then this whole universe is built up around it.

Yeah. It's religious a little bit. And then the image of a dove is, of course, like peace and also feminine, which is a lot of what I feel like this album as a whole talks about is grappling with the divine feminine and like queerness in general, which I think is so powerful. So how did you come to this band?

Is this like a college discovery or something? Or do you remember even how you found them? So they host a annual Chrismica show. Christmas? Yeah. Holiday Chrismica show. And model actress, this is there. They're from Brooklyn.

This is their second album. And they put on the best concert. ever seen in my entire life. Wow. Yes, the lead singer Cole, really inspired by burlesque and just dance culture, has a very, very long microphone cord and just wanders throughout the crowd. And of course, the crowd just parts. And everyone works together to hold the microphone cord.

He sings in your face the entire time. And it's awesome. Was he ever up in your face when you were? All the time. Yeah. So you managed to position yourself. Yeah. And I felt totally blessed.

I was like, oh, my God, it's happening to me. I'm chosen. It's like a cult, for sure. You can stay. You can go. Yeah. Super cool cut from them. Doves from the album, Piroet, and Model Actress.

I want to take us out on something completely different from everything that you've been playing. And really, I guess everything I've been playing as well. This is from an artist that goes by the name Early Fern. You know, I'd never heard of Early Fern, but this song is so hard. hauntingly beautiful that the first time I listened to it, I had to listen to it again to kind of figure out what exactly happened. Yeah. And I was reading a little bit about early Fern and they were talking about making music in the mid-New York Hudson Valley region, which I, I just lived there for a few years in college. And listening to it again, it's so felt like wandering around in beautiful nature.

I don't know if you felt that way too. Yeah, I mean, it's very beautiful. ambient music, found sound music. It's from a record that Early Fern has coming out called Wetland Interiors, inspired by the wetlands of Central New York State, which I didn't even know there were wetlands in New York, apparently. Apparently, you know, I didn't really know that either. Yeah, yeah. And this song is called Teasel, which I guess is a kind of plant that grows in wetlands.

But yeah, just close your eyes here, let this one take you away, and maybe you won't even need the weekly reset, we have coming after it. Yeah, you'll just fall asleep. Thanks so much, Dorah. Let's do this again. I would love to. Thanks for having me, Robin. All right, and keep listening for your weekly reset after this, early Fern, the song Teasel. For NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered.