HAERTS On World Cafe

More often than not, when you hear songs that ring out with the urgency and complexity of being in a relationship at a difficult time, you're hearing just one side of the story; what passion and loss and doubt and loneliness and lust feels like from just the side of the person making the music.

But today on the show, we have the band HAERTS, a married couple Nini Fabi and Ben Gebert, who started dating when they were 15 in Germany. They recently went through a really trying time when their future was uncertain both professionally — they had been dropped from their record label — and personally — they were working through some major relationship issues. So Nini and Benny went to a house in upstate New York to try and figure it all out. They brought some instruments and recording gear, and came out together with a new album called New Compassion, out today. Listening to it feels like you're hearing a couple work through their relationship from both sides in real time. In a way, you are

Nini and Ben start us off with a live performance of the song "Matter," from New Compassion. Hear that and more from this session in the player.

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