New Mix: Le Ren, Wet Leg, Ustad Saami, NoSo, More
Clockwise from upper left: Grace Cummings, NoSo, Le Ren, Ustad Saami Courtesy of the artists hide caption
My favorite new band, Wet Leg, has new music to kick off this edition of All Songs Considered. The Isle of Wight duo's funny, uplifting song is called "Wet Dream."
I have many sources for discovering new music, and one is our very own Tiny Desk Contest. NoSo, one of our entrants from 2019, has signed with Partisan Records. Her new song "Suburbia" reflects growing up as a queer Asian American in the predominantly white suburbs of Chicago.
Nynke Laverman may be the first Frisian artist on All Songs Considered. Her song "Stoarm" is filled with the hope and desire that a storm will come and shake us out of our old models and beliefs, sweeping us forward into a new view. We also hear 16-year-old Nora Brown's take on an old Appalachian tune; Grace Cummings imagines heaven as a place where the "air is clean, and things stop going up in flames," while Le Ren contemplates what it's like to have children and what that kind of love must look like.
The artist, Jane Fontana, cooped up at home during the pandemic, found imaginative ways to record her voice that involved sticking her head inside a piano and hearing the strings resonate as she sang.
The show closes with 77-year-old Pakistani musician Ustad Saami's "Prayer for Peace," sung as only he can, using a technique he's spent his life studying:; the 49-note scale system known as Surti. His producer, Ian Brennan, says Ustad Saami is the only vocal practitioner of Surti left in the world.