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From NPR music, it's all songs considered.

I'm Bob Boyland.

You may know Joe Wong.

He's the host of the podcast, The Trap Set, which more often than not covers the passion of drummers, but also other musicians.

Or maybe you've heard Joe Wong's music on Netflix, Russian Doll, or Master of None, or as a drummer in the band, Parts in Labor.

But now he has his own debut album.

It's called Night Creatures, which has not only 10 songs, but he's recorded instrumental versions of every song.

I'll play the opening track Dreams Wash Away, and at the end of the show, I'll close with the instrumental of that song.

Here's Joe Wong to introduce a song.

It features the album's producer and guitarist, Mary Timiny.

Dreams Wash Away is a song that came to me as my father was nearing the end of his life.

For nine years, he'd suffered the effects of a severe stroke and was living as a shadow of his former self.

I've had a heightened sense of existential dread since childhood,

yet being with a loved one who was ready for death and holding his hand as he journeyed off this world,

somehow took death off of a pedestal.

It's no longer an abstract, looming threat, and witnessing it was just as profoundly natural as witnessing a birth.

I suppose this should come as no surprise, but our culture seems to go to great lengths to obscure the inevitable.

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