NPR Music

Michael Stipe and Mike Mills look back on what inspired the band to make the beautiful but melancholy songs on Automatic For The People and what the music means to them after so many years. This month R.E.M. is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Automatic For The People with a deluxe box set that includes a re-mastered version of the album, demos and outtakes, live recordings, a book of rare photos and videos.

My current obsession is Wide Open, the new album from the Toronto band Weaves. Morgan Waters plays some of the most angular and memorable guitar I've heard in a long time, and the rhythm section is a dynamic driving force, too. Singer Jasmyn Burke may as well be on her own planet, with a style that's both adventurous in tone and affirming in message.I first became fascinated with Weaves' sound in 2015, and had the group perform a Tiny Desk concert last year. Now, for this +1 edition of All Songs Considered, I finally get to sit and talk with Morgan Waters and Jasmyn Burke, who play guest DJ, discuss Wide Open and more.

Here is one of the seminal underground records of the late 1960s: The band is Pearls Before Swine, and its album is called One Nation Underground. Although the album has been reissued on a number of occasions, those editions always got it wrong, using bad mixes or adding reverb to simulate stereo from the original mono record.But to celebrate its 50th anniversary, the proper mono mix has been reissued, and I'm so glad I can properly turn you on to a classic you might not know about, and hopefully will love as much as I do. It's an album that mixes folk music with exotic instrumentation, and it captures an innocence that I don't think will ever exist again in recorded music.I recently spoke with Tom Rapp, Pearls Before Swine's singer and songwriter. I started the conversation by playing the album's opening track "Another Time" as he listened on the line from Florida.

Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo walks us through Pacific Daydream, the band's new album of polished pop hits, and explains how he finally eliminated power chords from the group's sound.

On this +1 edition of All Songs Considered a conversation with Simon Raymonde, the former bassist for Cocteau Twins and founder of Bella Union records. He's back after a 20-year hiatus from music with a new song we're premiering. "I Saw The Days Go By" features singer Marissa Nadler and is just one of the tracks from Simon Raymonde's upcoming album he made with drummer Richie Thomas under the name Lost Horizons. The record, Ojalá, is out November 3 on Bella Union.

It'd been more than three years since Tune-Yards released new music, but the singer and multi-instrumentalist Merrill Garbus is back, now as a duo with Nate Brenner. Her new single is a sonic thrill ride called "Look At Your Hands," and it's from her just-announced album, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life (out Jan. 19). Garbus says the new song is a meditation on the mess she feels the world is in and how various political and cultural -isms manifest themselves within her. Full playlist: 1. Tune-Yards: "Look At Your Hands," 2. Caroline Says: "Winter Is Cold," 3. Balmorhea: "Slow Stone," 4. F ingers: "All Rolled Up," 5. A. Savage: "What Do I Do"

The queen of East Nashville talks with NPR Music's Ann Powers about her new album, All American Made, working with Willie Nelson and what it was like to record at the legendary Sun Studios.

Composer Daniel Hart talks about the inspiration and challenges behind his stunning score for the deeply existential film A Ghost Story.

MGMT, the psych-pop duo behind one of the decade's best earworms, is back with its first new music in four years. "Little Dark Age," is the title track to their 2018 album, and it's a pulsing, synthesized meditation on the age of anxiety over a world coming apart. Full playlist: 1. Dark Rooms: "I Get Overwhelmed," 2. MGMT: "Little Dark Age," 3. Susanne Sundfør: "Reincarnation," 4. Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile: "Blue Cheese," 5. Howard: "Mother's Wedding"

They are often beloved classics, or works of pure genius. And you never, ever need to hear them again. They are the songs that must be retired.