Can a feel-good playlist still have depth?

After a few heavy weeks of protest music, world events, viral posts, and existential spiraling, Kate and Richie decided they needed a reset. This week’s playlists are filled with songs they simply enjoy—but because this is Entry Points Radio, “feel good” still leads to Greek tragedy, ancestral languages, immigrant stories, the collapse of civilization, and at least one polyamorous tardigrade.

Kate’s playlist moves through Hadestown and the eternal question of why we keep retelling stories when we already know how they end; summer memories with The Lovin’ Spoonful; moving to Texas with Blaze Foley; an eighteen-year-old rooftop crush soundtracked by Nick Drake; Bulgarian choral music that feels like the ancestors calling; Lebanese pop; an extraordinary Ossetian artist from the Caucasus; the very useful Arabic philosophy of toz; and Austin-based Ecuadorian songwriter Javier Jara’s beautiful reflections on immigration, culture, and the many worlds living just down the street.

Richie builds a feel-good playlist that is emphatically not saccharine, moving from Cécile McLorin Salvant and M83 to Australian electronic music, Skee-Lo’s refreshingly honest hip hop, a Bon Iver cover with more drums, Filipino vocal group Acapellago, Eddie Money, DJ Harrison, and the cathartic electronic brilliance of Daft Punk.

Along the way, Kate and Richie ask whether joy has to ignore suffering—or whether real joy actually requires depth, memory, catharsis, and human connection. They also consider why singing with other people makes us feel better, whether algorithms and AI are optimizing all the interesting parts out of art, and why sometimes “I like this song” is reason enough to share it.

Also discussed: Richie being a Scorpio, the unforgivable “Java Jive,” Kate’s teenage Barnes & Noble almost-boyfriend, Mick Jagger at the MoMA coat check, an opera about two microplastics falling in love with a polyamorous tardigrade, and whether an egg is emotionally somewhere between a carrot and a donut.

Because the world is still the world—but joy, lightness, ridiculousness, and music are part of what makes it worth fighting for.

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Think of it as a mixtape with a passport...

Produced and Edited by Kate Bass and Richard Steighner

Full Playlist on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5uDffKrZ7LQsFJVjHae6Sr?si=XjjfvCrFR1eyoQ6dfCrBfg

Full Playlist on Apple Music:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/entry-points-8/pl.u-aZb0kWDImKRWMJ

Youtube:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXgeSnlkZC_zdaWytIIUx8iA-mDGRnVVQ&si=70zPI3tyslA6xVqP

Patreon for the Full Playlist Archive:

https://www.patreon.com/cw/EntryPointsRadio

Entry Points Radio is back with Part 2 of our conversation with TaraxBella, the extraordinary sister duo from Abuja, Nigeria. After internet connectivity issues forced Tara and Bella to jump off early — because Nigerian internet had other plans — Kate and Richie keep the conversation going with the songs they had chosen for the week.

Richie’s list moves from hidden histories to big feelings: Big Mama Thornton’s original “Hound Dog” before Elvis made it famous, Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo,” Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight,” Chilean artist Nekki and the power of roots, The Cranberries’ “Zombie,” Fabrizio De André’s Italian song about the Sand Creek Massacre, Sinead O’Connor, and a Swiss vocal tradition involving mountains, bells, overtones, and one bad European mustache era.

Kate’s list follows the thread of protest, simplicity, grief, beauty, and not knowing how to be a person in a world on fire: Joan Baez’s “There But for Fortune,” Clairo’s “Alewife,” Bob Dylan’s “Gates of Eden,” Stromae’s “Fils de joie,” Jacob Banks, Moroccan artist Ouidad, The Breath’s “Let It Calm You Down,” and the Sikh singer Bhai Mehal Singh Ji — whose music becomes an entry point into Sikh devotional tradition, service, and the powerful presence of Nihang Sikhs at the recent protests in India.

Along the way, we talk about who gets credit for music, what songs reveal when you actually listen to them, why folk music once felt so politically alive, how identity gets complicated by borders and belonging, and why sometimes the only honest answer is: we don’t know what to do, but we’re still listening.

Also discussed: Elvis’s nose, Colorado having far more sides than anyone asked for, whether we are all becoming jaded folk singers, Alaska again obviously, and the eternal truth that sometimes everything matters and nothing matters and somehow music still helps.

Produced and Edited by Kate Bass and Richard Steighner

Full Playlist on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3BHFLJuPtM2lPajZbV9ZJC?si=VVFQKRCPT2eo_BzGO046Nw

Full Playlist on Apple Music:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/entry-points-7/pl.u-JPAZE8ZIBRlqZb

Watch/Subscribe on YouTube:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXgeSnlkZC_zdaWytIIUx8iA-mDGRnVVQ&si=70zPI3tyslA6xVqP

Deezer:

https://www.deezer.com/us/show/1003292131

Amazon:

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e5cab8c2-ae60-4411-966b-b3d42257fec3/entry-points-radio

iHeartRadio:

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/337398467/

Substack:

https://globalmusiccollective.substack.com/

Support us on Patreon for the Full Playlist Archive:

https://www.patreon.com/cw/EntryPointsRadio

What happens when a story from India, told by two musicians in America, resonates with two sisters in Nigeria?

Entry Points Radio is back with our second guest episode — and Part 1 of a two-part conversation with our friends TaraxBella, the incredible Abuja-based sister duo whose music moves from love songs to activism with soulful magic.

This week’s conversation picks up right where the world left us: talking about the power of stories, why musicians can’t always separate art from politics, and what it means to keep using your voice when everything feels overwhelming. Tara and Bella reflect on the recent India clip that brought so many new people into the Entry Points conversation, and from there, the episode opens into Nigeria, protest music, bad internet, Big Brother as distraction, voter apathy, faith, grief, motherhood, and the eternal cultural phenomenon known as Nigerian time.

Their playlist moves between fight and rest: TaraxBella’s own “Oxygen” and “Mr. President,” Fela Kuti’s “Suffering and Smiling,” Falz as one of Nigeria’s fiercest musical activists, ODENOSE using music to say “we no dey fear,” Jessica Bongos’ “Breathe,” Deborah Enenche’s “Rest,” Nathaniel Bassey’s “In Your Presence,” and the emotional survival power of gospel, soul, protest, and songs that help us come back to ourselves.

Along the way, we talk about what it means to be artists in difficult times, why “I’m not interested in politics” doesn’t really work when politics is shaping everyone’s daily life, how storytelling makes us feel less alone, and why sometimes the playlist has to hold both the front line and the fetal position.

Also: Kate brings up Alaska again, Richie tries to survive Nigerian time, TaraxBella gives us “activist mode,” and Lauryn Hill makes everyone cry. Obviously.

This is Part 1 of 2 with TaraxBella.

Produced and Edited by Kate Bass and Richard Steighner

🟢 Full Playlist on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3BHFLJuPtM2lPajZbV9ZJC?si=VVFQKRCPT2eo_BzGO046Nw

🍎 Full Playlist on Apple Music:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/entry-points-7/pl.u-JPAZE8ZIBRlqZb

▶️ Watch/Subscribe on YouTube:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXgeSnlkZC_zdaWytIIUx8iA-mDGRnVVQ&si=70zPI3tyslA6xVqP

Subscribe on Deezer:

https://www.deezer.com/us/show/1003292131

Subscribe on Amazon:

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e5cab8c2-ae60-4411-966b-b3d42257fec3/entry-points-radio

Subscribe on iHeartRadio:

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/337398467/

🗟 Full Transcript:

https://globalmusiccollective.substack.com/

🥰 Support us on Patreon for the Full Playlist Archive:

https://www.patreon.com/cw/EntryPointsRadio