New Music Friday: The best albums out Feb. 21

All Songs Considered

NPR

Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

Sam Fender. The Drive-By Truckers' Patterson Hood. Jesse Welles. NPR Music's Stephen Thompson discussed these new albums and more with country star Kathy Mattea, who hosts NPR's weekly show 'Mountain Stage.'

Featured albums:

• Sam Fender, 'People Watching'

• Patterson Hood (of Drive-By Truckers), Exploding Trees & Airplane Scream

• Jesse Welles, 'Middle'

• Sunny War, 'Armageddon In A Summer Dress'

• Saya Gray, 'SAYA'

Check out the long list of albums out Feb. 21 and stream our New Music Friday playlist at npr.org/music.

Credits:

• Host: Stephen Thompson

• Guest: Kathy Mattea, Mountain Stage

• Producer: Simon Rentner

• Editor: Otis Hart

• Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed

• Vice President, Music and Visuals: Keith Jenkins

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Whatever your job is, wherever you're from. NPR is a resource for all Americans. Our mission is to create a more informed public. We do that by providing free access to independent, rigorous journalism that's accountable to the public. You, federal funding for public media provides critical support of this work. Learn more about how to safeguard it at
0:21.3	Protect Mypublicmedia.org. A quick note before the show, this podcast contains explicit language.
0:30.6	Happy Friday, everyone, from NPR Music. It's New Music Friday. I'm Stephen Thompson, here with the host
0:37.1	of Mountain Stage Kathy Mathia. Hey, Kathy. How you doing, Stephen? It's New Music Friday. I'm Stephen Thompson here with the host of Mountain Stage Kathy Matea. Hey, Kathy.
0:39.8	Hey, you doing, Stephen. It's so funny. It's still crazy to hear you say the host of Mountain Stage.
0:45.0	For me, it's crazy because I grew up listening to your music.
0:49.7	Oh, that's so nice. You know, I worked at a grocery store in Iola, Wisconsin, a tiny town in the middle of Wisconsin, about 12, 1,300 people.
0:58.9	And they played country music, and I thought I was too cool for country music because I was a teenager.
1:04.6	And songs slowly got their hooks in me, and I fell in love with country music.
1:09.9	And one of the songs that I most fell in love with was 18 wheels and a dozen roses.
1:14.6	Oh, that's so nice.
1:16.6	It feels so full circle to get to talk to you about music like 37 years later.
1:25.6	Yeah, you know, it's interesting because those songs, you know,
1:29.1	you never know who hears it, you know, and then somebody walks up, stops me every once in a while
1:34.6	or on a mountain stage some of the young musicians come and say, um, my mom is blowing up my phone
1:41.0	right now, uh, because I grew up listening to you with my whole family,
1:45.2	and can I take a selfie with you? And I mean, you know, it's just the sweetest thing, and I don't
1:50.4	think I would have ever gotten to see that reflected back to me because of this show.
2:08.5	Well, we're going to talk about Mountain Stage soon, but we're also here to talk about some of the best new albums that are out today.
2:11.9	We're going to start with the English singer-songwriter Sam Fender.
2:15.1	Sam Fender's new album is called People Watching. Sam Fender is an English singer-songwriter,
2:39.0	sound inspired by British rock.
	...

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