Facing a pandemic lockdown, huge political upheavals and ongoing uncertainty about the future, musicians including Oumou Sangare and Songhoy Blues offer lessons in creativity and optimism.
Nguyen processes feelings of dread in her new song for Morning Edition's Song Project, written after the skies over San Francisco turned orange from wildfire haze.
The Big Thief singer and guitarist holed up in the mountains of Western Massachusetts to record not one, but two albums, simply titled songs and instrumentals.
"Disco lights shine out of the darkness," says the pop veteran, who channels lockdown despair into glittery escapism on her 15th album, simply titled Disco.
MacArthur fellow McLorin Salvant sings jazz standards as well as forgotten early songs. "In jazz, I felt I could sing these deep, husky lows," she told Terry Gross in this 2015 interview.
Blade, based in Nashville, has parlayed a youth of solitude into an artistic practice based inspired by video game soundtracks and visions of a dark, silver-lined future.
NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with American multi-instrumentalist and meditation expert Laraaji about laughter meditation, his latest album Sun Piano and the artist he is grateful for: Mia Doi Todd.
Rap from Nashville isn't new, nor is the city's tendency to overlook the creators and entrepreneurs behind that music – despite country artists borrowing liberally from the genre over the past decade.