NPR Music - The Contenders, Vol. 22: Geese, Dijon, Juana Molina, more

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

We’ve got two of the most-talked-about albums of the year, the return of electro-folk wonder Juana Molina, guitar rock from Alien Boy, Agriculture and more.  NPR Music’s Dora Levite joins host Robin Hilton as we update our running list of the year’s best songs.Featured artists and songs:1. Geese: “Islands of Men,” from ‘Getting Killed’2. Juana Molina: “Siestas ahí,” from ‘DOGA’3. Dijon: “Yamaha,” from ‘Baby’4. Devin Shaffer: “All My Dreams Are Coming True,” from ‘Patience’5. Agriculture: “Hallelujah,” from ‘The Spiritual Sound’6. Alien Boy: “Cold Air,” from ‘You Wanna Fade?’Weekly reset: A pixilated afternoon in the Minecraft universe.Enjoy 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

Seeing your parents cries. It's awful. It's like seeing your teacher outside of school. It's terrible. Is it awful seeing your teacher outside? It's weird. It's weird. You don't know what to do.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I had like two teachers, and I learned that they weren't married or living in the classroom. What do you mean? Like, there was, like, main teacher and associate teacher.

Right. And I remember learning that they're not married. And they go home, too. Oh, you assumed that the two teachers were married. Yeah, they lived there in the classroom. And when was this? Probably my last year of college. I learned.

Wow. Yeah. I think everyone was in on it. Oh, it's all songs considered. I'm Robin Hilton. NPR Music's Dora Levitt back. Dora. Thank you.

So much for having me on again. I'm so excited to be here again. I got to be honest. You really killed it on your debut show, which was like a month ago? Has it already been about a month? I think it was around a month ago. Honestly, I still share that episode with people.

I really do. I shared it with someone just today, in fact, because it was a lot of fun having you on. Your picks were great, and I wanted to get you back on. But this is one of our contenders episodes where we update our running list of the year's best songs. These are the tracks we can't stop playing or that we love so much that they're in the running for a spot on our final best of 2025 lists at the end of the year. Dora, I think you should go first because you've got a couple of things that are like supernova hot right now. It's like the only two things I've heard anyone talking about for about a month or so now, and you've got both of them. So then obviously we should start with geese. Geese, which is every time I open my phone, my Instagram algorithm only gives

me pictures of geese. The band. Oh, the band. I thought you're going to say like it overheard you say geese at some point. And so now it's just feeding you pictures of geese because it's listening to you. You know. It is absolutely listening to me. Anyways, geese is a band, and the song I want to play is Islands of Men. This is the islands of men. All too far. Peace of mine.

A key. This song is like one long crescendo. Like one six-minute crescendo. It starts off so small and just keeps getting bigger and bolder and wilder. The drum click with the guitars and Cameron Winters just like completely moaning, whining voice, just feels like pulling taffy and just rushing forward. It's so beautiful and feels like what it is like to see the sun. I love the image of pulling taffy and what did you say running for running and pulling taffy at the same time. I don't know if I've heard a band,

honestly, though, that has a sound quite as slippery as theirs. It just refuses to be any one thing. this song is maybe, I don't know if I'd call it conventional because there's all this like trash can percussion and other weirdness going on. But wouldn't you say when you listen to the whole album that this is maybe one of the more straight ahead sort of rock tracks on it? Completely.

I mean, the whole album is amazing. And it's so hard to place. And I feel like I've been trying to, I listen to the album a lot. And I've been trying to make sense of what the hell he's saying, like what Cameron Winters talking about. Even does this mean, yeah. Yeah, and what they're trying to reference,

and I almost feel like the point is to not try and figure it out and to just like take it at face value. And I really like how this song, like you said, does break that chaos, but I mean, amazing chaos. And is just this song of longing to me and wondering what is beyond your life. And it's just so relatable. Do you know girl band?

I think they're called Gila Band now. I think they changed their name. They made this, it was just sort of like end of times, rock, super abrasive and chaotic and unpredictable. There are moments on this geese album that sound like that. But then there are moments that I hear the talking heads and the rolling stones. Full in the Rain by Led Zeppelin is something that I always think back to when I listen to this album. the percussion and just Fool in the Rain is one of my favorite songs of all time. But that's kind of the only reference I've been able to grab onto.

Yeah. Any reference I come up with is so fleeting. It's like, oh, I just got a hint of Tom Waits, sort of ramshackle vibe of Tom Waits. Oh, no, I got a little bit of talking heads in there, you know, but it's like glam rock and even hints of funk. And it's so wild. So the album, Getting Killed, which is a great album name, Getting Killed. already out, that song, Islands of Men, from Geese. So do you know Wanamalina at all?

I've heard Wanamalina songs in my life, but I've never focused. Oh, okay. Well, so one of my all-time favorite artists, Wanamalina, singer, electronic and sort of folk artist from Argentina, always excited when she's got something new coming out. And which you kind of never know because she can go years between projects. In fact, her most recent album was in 2017. Eight years ago, it was called Halo.

But she just announced she's got a brand new album coming out later this fall, an album called Doga, D-O-G-A. And the first track that we get to hear from it is called Siesta Ahi. That is what I think it must feel like to live in a video game. Oh, really? Yeah, that was my first thought. That's funny because it seems pastoral to me, but I guess, yeah, sort of a pixelated pastoral universe.

Yeah, that's what I was getting. It felt like jumping around in a large pixelated field, kind of like Minecraft. I love Minecraft. Well, it's interesting because I think the thing that has always been one of her superpowers is that she can take these weird little digital glitchy sounds and make them sound alive in a way, Like they're coming from not machines, but from some sort of magical creature.

Yeah. Do you hear that? I really do, especially when I was reading the lyrics and it was talking about feeling close to another person and feeling close to how someone makes you feel and craving that feeling. I was really hearing that in those glitchy, repetitive moments that were playing over and over. I wrote down an obsessive nostalgia getting caught up in a feeling of the past. Yeah, there's a sweetness to it, I think, for sure. If you don't know a lot about her older stuff, you should really go back and dig into her catalog. She's actually, I think this is only her eighth album or so, and she's been putting out music for about 30 years.

Her first album came out in 1996. So like I said, she can go a really long time between records. but definitely like if you only pick one, listen to Segundo. Segundo came out in 2000, still a mind-bending and blowing album. She is so good at this. So again, that song, Siesta Ahi, is from the album Doga, DOGA, and it is out on November 5th. All right, keep listening. We're going to have your weekly reset at the end of the show.

And also a reminder that if you enjoy the program, please leave us a review on Apple Music or Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also drop us an email if you'd like with any feedback. It's always welcome. Our email addresses all songs at npr.org. Dora, should we get to the second thing that basically everyone I know is talking about? Absolutely. What do you think it is? Do you know what it is?

I have to guess it's Dijon, but it also could be agriculture, which is... Is everyone talking about agriculture? Just me and my brother. Okay. So do you have... one song that feels perpetually always stuck in your head. Just one? Like it's always the same song?

Just one. Yeah. No, not really. But, I mean, there are some that are more insidious than others for sure. And I very often will almost nightly, in fact, I'll have some song stuck in my head, can't get out. And I'll reach for another song just to push that one out just so that I can mix it up. Yeah, I call that brain radio. Brain radio.

Well, my dial is broken. Why do you ask? Is there a single song that you, that's always in your head? Yes. What is it? Oh, Superman by Lori Anderson at any moment. And it drives the people that I love insane. Because it's got that do, do, do, do, do, do.

I'm always like, ha, ha, ha. You can do it. That's how the, that's the whole, basically the whole song of Superman, yeah. Yeah. Well, anyways, I was so excited when I heard that Dijon in his song, Yamaha, pretty explicitly, at least to me, samples O Superman. I totally missed, and all the times I've listened to it, that that sound at the beginning could have been Lori Anderson's O Superman.

So now let's hear a little bit of O Superman. Well, for sure. And do you think that's the same sound here in the Dijon? I feel like it's the same key, at least. I mean, it sure could be. Right? Yeah. Wow, you've got a good ear.

I wouldn't have made that connection, but, you know, he clearly has a love for 80s sounds and 80s production. Oh, Superman came out early 80s. If I had to guess, I'd say 81, 82, somewhere around then. Prince. It's so Prince. It's so Prince. But that particular era of Prince, 80s era Prince is all over this album.

And I think the fact that the Lori Anderson breathing goes unnoticed and can go unnoticed so easily is just a testament to how much that song can just kind of act as a as a metronome, as a really beautiful metronome. Whenever I hear a song that references another song I love, it feels like it's written. Like for me, I feel so excited and so seen. I mean, I'm like, oh, it's an Easterer. It's like getting a little Easter egg. Yeah, it feels like, oh, like, oh, I and I alone have discovered this thing.

I totally feel. I totally get it. It's a cool feeling. I always love little moments in albums and songs like where I catch something that I know was meant to be discovered, right? That was put in there with the hopes that somebody would discover it. Yeah. But yeah, this song is so great and it's so prince. And it's so prints in the production, but also just in the themes of desire.

It's written for his wife about his wife. This whole album is about his wife. and his new baby and just his devotion to his family. Sometimes I listen to some of the songs like Baby off the album Baby. And I just start crying because I'm like he loves his family so much. Yeah. I also actually think this has a lot in common with the Geese record and that both refuse to be any one thing.

And they're kind of all over the place but still work and feel cohesive. You know, there's like hints of doo-wop on that title cut, in fact, that you were talking about baby. there's a little duwop, there's gospel, there's funk, there's sold, and there's rock. And that actually fits with Prince really well. Also, because Prince straddled all these worlds, right, where he was rock, but also kind of R&B and kind of lots of different things. It almost feels like if anything was just slightly out of place was slightly off or was slightly different, it wouldn't work as well. It's such a well-crafted mishmash.

Yeah, I mean, it's chopped up. It's really, really warped and surreal at times, but still holds together so perfectly. Yeah. So the album, again, is called Baby in that song, Yamaha from Dijon. Well, I want to play a cut that you turned me onto. And I really thought you were going to play it this week. When you first shared this with me a couple weeks or so ago, I just sat on it. I thought, oh, I want to play this so bad, but I know Doors going to come on and do the show again.

and I don't want to steal this from her. And then when you didn't pick it this week, I was like, I'm totally playing this. This is a singer I did not know until you told me about her. Devin Schaefer. Yeah, I didn't know her either. I was looking at new releases for our New Music Friday podcast, and I stumbled upon the single and became obsessed. Well, you know me well, I guess, because the second I heard it, I immediately loved it. Devin Schaefer has an album coming out in November.

It's called Patience and the song that you shared. that I want to play is so beautiful. It is called All My Dreams Are Coming True. So much in this song that is so beautiful to me. I mean, her voice, obviously. Insane. But there's just this sadness and this weariness to it that just really hits me. Yeah, I find it kind of hard to listen to this song without crying.

I was listening to it yesterday and just completely sobbing. And I didn't even realize it's so heart-wrenching. Yeah. I think the moment that gets me is maybe when she says, tell my parents, I'll be home soon. Because there's a lot going on in the song, and we can talk about it. But she really captures this time in this feeling, I think, when you're grown up and you're on your own,

but you still have the safety net of your parents. to escape to if you need to. It's kind of this in-between period of your life in a way between the adult that you've become and the life that you've created for yourself and the one that you grew up with that you had to say goodbye to when you became an adult and left home, right? And I don't know, that's just a time and a place and a feeling that always gets me. It's like almost being weightless. It's your, it's like freedom, but there's still this longing for a safe feeling. It's so beautiful and so real.

Is that what do you think got you when you listen to it? What really got me is the numbness in this song, and it's almost total apathy, saying all my dreams are coming true, but also saying I've been kind of stuck in this loop of time. I'm sitting around doing nothing. as if to ignore all the emptiness and just kind of keep telling yourself, but all of my dreams are coming true.

Yeah, it seems pretty obvious that she's not serious when she says all my dreams are coming true. I mean, she talks about watching this big fly in her room and just wondering when it's going to die and she's pacing around. She's so restless but stuck at the same time. Yeah. Well, a great find, Dora, Devin Schaefer, this album, Patience, it is out November 3rd, at her debut studio album. She did have another album. I saw it came out in 2021.

I listened also very lovely called In My Dreams. I'm there. But maybe that was home recorded or something. But studio album called Patience from Devin Schaefer out November 3rd. Dora, you've got one more that I know you want to play. I do. The other band that just everyone's talking about all the time. You and your brother?

Right. It's just me and my brother. This is a band called Agriculture. and their second album, the spiritual sound, just came out a few weeks ago, and this is their song, Hallelujah. And we should say, before we play this, that there is a long gap.

I was going to say that, I forgot. I mean, you can hear kind of a low, rumbling hum in there, but it's a long gap, almost like a hidden track. It's 20 seconds. Yeah. But the gap is part of it. So when you get to the gap in this song, just sit and wait and just,

Let it sort of sink in. What a wild evolution this song has. Like it starts right out the gate. It's got this kind of a chugging groove. I think, oh, this is going to be like a T-Rex, glam rock jam. And then it just as quickly kind of dies out. And it's not that. It doesn't turn into that sort of rock thing.

But then at the end, after this long break, it does. turns into this total like kind of Midwest emo like American footbally. Yeah. Just jam. You have really big shoes to fill when you write a song called Hallelujah. Yeah. That's true. Huge shoes to fill.

And this song is so subtle and it's so present. And every pause, because it's made up of so many pauses, it feels like it restarts. And it's really sitting with you. And I want to grab the lyrics and the words out of the air. They feel so tangible and so there. Well, it's interesting because I read that the band was really inspired in part by this idea that the music consumption, the way we receive and listen to music or hear music anyway, that it has been really flattened out over the years and kind of sanitized. And everything is just background noise. Now, no one is really having any kind of deep engagement with music.

and that kind of fits in with this song in a way, right? Because that pause in the middle forces you to lean in and stop everything and really start engaging with it. Completely. I even didn't really realize that there was still that low hum under the pause. There is, yeah. You can't hear, like if you're in a car or on the metro or something, you're not going to hear that. But yeah, get a good pair of headphones in a quiet room. There actually is a low rumbling.

It's almost like you've suddenly descended. into this murky other world. And this whole album, agriculture, they call themselves ecstatic black metal. And the album is kind of split into these two pieces. There's this really heavy black metal loud sound for the first half. And then throughout the entire album, there's this fulky undercurrent that you really hear in this song that's kind of peeled away. I am not the most knowledgeable person on black metal. you would have to ask Lars about that, probably.

I was to say, I bet Lars loves this band. This is wild because I have not listened to the rest of the record, but now you really got me wanting to go back and listen to the whole thing. Good stuff. Agriculture, so the album, The Spiritual Sound, that just came out. It just came out on October 3rd. Well, I've got one more that I want to play. And this is something that I've been sitting on for a while

because it's from an album that came out all the way back in May, although I think they had a deluxe version, maybe at the top of August. But it's from a band called Alien Boy. I'd heard of Alien Boy. And when I listened to this, I think you said a few weeks ago, you were like, someone said that guitar rock is dead. And it was in reference to Andy de Rousseau. Right, right.

And I heard the song and I was like, who told you that? Right. Who said that guitar rock is dead? I mean, this album, it's like shoegazy, smashing pumpkins crossed with My Bloody Valentine. The guitars, they've got that sort of metallicy, shimmery quality, but also just so raw and ragged too. Well, the name of the album that they put out in May is called You Want to Fade. And so many songs I could have played from it,

but I want to go out on the song, Cold Air. Dora Levitt, always a great hang. Thanks so much for doing this. Thanks for having me. Always the best hang, Robin Hilton. Could you say that again? But kind of like in the clear, so if I need to cut it in with anything else I use. Right, yeah.

Robin Hilton. Robin Hilton. Robin Hilton. Robin Hilton! And for NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's All Songs Considered.