The Contenders, Vol. 22: Geese, Dijon, Juana Molina, more

All Songs Considered

NPR

Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’ve got two of the most-talked-about albums of the year, the return of electro-folk wonder Juana Molina, guitar rock from Alien Boy, Agriculture and more. NPR Music’s Dora Levite joins host Robin Hilton as we update our running list of the year’s best songs.

Featured artists and songs:
1. Geese: “Islands of Men,” from ‘Getting Killed’
2. Juana Molina: “Siestas ahí,” from ‘DOGA’
3. Dijon: “Yamaha,” from ‘Baby’
4. Devin Shaffer: “All My Dreams Are Coming True,” from ‘Patience’
5. Agriculture: “Hallelujah,” from ‘The Spiritual Sound’
6. Alien Boy: “Cold Air,” from ‘You Wanna Fade?’

Weekly reset: A pixilated afternoon in the Minecraft universe.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Seeing your parents cries. It's awful. It's like seeing your teacher outside of school. It's terrible. Is it awful seeing your teacher? It's weird. It's weird. You don't know what to do. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I had like two teachers, and I learned that they weren't married or living in the classroom. What do you mean? Like, there was like main teacher and associate teacher. Right. And I remember learning that they're not married. and they go home too.
0:23.2	Oh, you assume that the two teachers were main teacher and associate teacher. Right. And I remember learning that they're not married.
0:22.9	And they go home, too.
0:25.3	Oh, you assumed that the two teachers were married.
0:27.1	Yeah, they lived there in the classroom.
0:27.8	And when was this?
0:29.8	Probably my last year of college.
0:31.9	I learned.
0:33.0	Wow.
0:33.4	Yeah.
0:35.5	I think everyone was in on it.
0:45.6	Oh, it's all songs considered.
0:47.2	I'm Robin Hilton.
0:50.1	NPR Music's Dora Levitt back.
0:50.8	Dora.
0:51.9	Thank you.
0:53.0	So much for having me on again.
1:12.4	I'm so excited to be here again. I got to be honest. You really killed it on your debut show, which was like a month ago? Has it already been about a month? I think it was around a month ago. Honestly, I still share that episode with people. I really do. I shared it with someone just today, in fact, because it was a lot of fun having you on. Your picks were great, and I wanted to get you back on. But this is one of our
1:17.6	contenders episodes where we update our running list of the year's best songs. These are the tracks
1:23.8	we can't stop playing, or that we love so much that they're in the running for a
1:28.4	spot on our final best of 2025 lists at the end of the year.
1:33.1	Dora, I think you should go first because you've got a couple of things that are like
	...

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