March 21, 2026

by Ann Powers

This week, our critic digs into the bounty of international music on YouTube, of all places, and emerges with a dozen treasures (and counting).

Robbie Stickland

Hello blossomers,

The equinox is upon us, rushing in after dragging its feet for too long. In Nashville we’ve cycled through what we call “false spring,” when the eastern redbuds show off their fuschia flowers and gardeners weed and plant optimistically, even though they know one or two more freezes will likely arrive. I had to pull out my puffy jacket to walk the dog earlier this week, but today it’s shorts weather, 70 degrees, a perfect day to take a stroll with a great playlist. I’m here to offer you one, a commemoration that also, I hope, will give you a little push into the year’s next phase.

My listening throughout 2026’s first season has been determinedly eclectic. For the past few years, I’ve been settling into an evening listening practice of online global travel, mostly via YouTube, where the algorithm is pretty trainable and videos offer clues to help place the songs I come to love within the milieus that produced them. After I find a gem, I trace its provenance, translating local news reports and blog posts into English, trying to grasp where its makers stand within their own communities. I’ve been drawn to breakthrough artists making club beats and veterans working in small, indie scenes grounded in folk or punk. I’ve found some artists with vast catalogs, whole realms where I can get lost; others might only have a couple of singles out. One new favorite might lead me to another — Paris based band the Oracle Sisters, who made one of my top albums of last year, make a guest appearance on the latest album by the jazz-plus singer Gabi Hartmann whose wondrous song suite will surely appear on my best list come December.

I’m not exploring entirely alone. Websites like Rolling Stone Mena (for the Arab world) and Okay Africa help me see what’s buzzy, and I always rely on my colleagues and friends at Alt.Latino for a continent-hopping range of Spanish-language picks. Some folks I follow on various platforms, like the Korean culture expert Jae-Ha Kim on Substack and the pop critic Dave Moore on BlueSky (he also has a Substack), offer expert opinions and context. Radio shows like WFMU’s Bodega Pop, hosted by my old friend Gary Sullivan, give me a relatively passive way into new sounds. If I want to go full ambient, I spend a while surfing the global frequencies using Radio Garden, where it’s a bit difficult to figure out what you’re hearing but the drift of sounds always intrigues. And often, I’ll unwind by watching several videos on the YouTube channel run by the music platform Colors, which produces performance videos in the simple, warm environs of their Berlin studios featuring the widest-ranging array of international artists I’ve found: recent installments of the weekly series A Colors Show have featured artists from France, Italy, Portugal, Mexico, Colombia, Ireland and Kazakhstan.

My message here is simple: It’s not hard to expand your range as a listener, and the payoff is major. Different rhythms, song structures and languages enrich and expand the listening experience and put me in touch, however remotely, with people living lives very different from my own. What the music often shows me is that we also share a lot: deep emotion, a sense of pleasure and the longing for connection that music so often expresses and provisionally satisfies. Most of all, I just love the mix. I like hearing how the folk-infused fusion music of the Egyptian-born singer Maryam Saleh segues into the baroque pop of the Norwegian duo Konradsen, or how the playfulness of the Johannesburg band Babble Hume relates to the comic spirit of Munich’s Udo West.

I don’t exactly believe that old saw about music being a universal language; every song emerges from a particular scene, steeped in the customs and communicative quirks of its makers and the communities that enclose them. I also acknowledge that I’m still a tourist when it comes to these explorations, and I accept that the understanding they offer is limited. Still, songs sung in different languages, or even those sung in English by musicians whose home customs are very different from my own, offer glimpses into creative realms that challenge my own habits and prejudices. And while mainstream pop has grown more global than ever in the age of Afrobeats and K-Pop (read Sheldon Pearce’s great essay on the new BTS album here), I’ve found that seeking out more off-the radar music helps me fight off the tendency to absorb this far-flung music into an Americentric world view. It’s a tiny way I can resist my own provincialism.

I’d love to invite you to join in this hobby of mine, starting with a dozen international songs that have really struck me so far this year. I have more to share, and I keep finding new favorites all the time, so consider this part one — and I hope you’ll embark on your own adventure soon. It’s a big world. Tell me what you hear out there.

Pedro Pastor and El Plan De La Mariposa, “Amar”
The scion of one of Spain’s noted musical families, the Madrid-born singer-songwriter Pedro Pastor has enjoyed success for a decade leading the band Los Locos Descalzos. His new album 10 Locos Años Descalzos wanders through that band’s catalog hand in hand with many collaborators, from Cuban legend Silvio Rodriguez to the Andalusian maverick El Kanka. It’s a great entryway to a rabbit hole! My fave track is this slinky dance number with the Argentine band El Plan De La Mariposa.

Maryam Saleh, “Wanas”
Since the early 2000s, Maryam Saleh has been expanding the language of Egyptian folk music in bands like Jawaz Shafar and through collaborations with the Lebanese producer and musician Zeid Hamdan. She’s also an actor who has found success in both theater and film. For “Wanas,” the first single from Syrr, her first album in eight years, she joined forces with the adventurous producer El Waili to create a “shaabi banger” that renders that style of Egyptian wedding music unforgettably hypnotic.

Konradsen featuring Beharie, “Efficiency”
My newfound nostalgia for all things Scandi after a recent Swedish sojourn often leads me to that region’s singer-songwriters, whose wistfulness matches mine. I stumbled across the gentle indie pop of the Oslo-based artist Beharie last year; his exquisite “Everybody Tells Me To Let Go” remains my favorite Sade song not actually by that Nigerian-born English queen. Following him led me to the duo Konradsen, whose creations are, dare I say, the musical equivalent of a Joachim Trier film: elegant, formally rigorous and quietly daring, packing a huge emotional punch. I love the pairing of Beharie’s voice and that of Jenny Marie Sabel, the blend is calm and inward turning with a hidden edge.

Souad Massi featuring Gaël Faye, “D’ici, De là-bas”
As unique as every place in the world may be, in this volatile time some moods seem to circle like trade winds. The Algerian-French vocalist and songwriter Souad Massi rides the current of dislocation on this quietly intense track from her recently released seventh album Zagate, augmented by a murmured rhyme from the Franco-Rwandan rapper Gaël Faye. “Give me spring and I will give you flowers” — who doesn’t feel that yearning right now?

Chaar Diwaari featuring Sonu Nigam, “Iss Tarah”
I don’t really know if it’s accurate to describe 23-year-old New Delhi producer and songwriter Garv Taneja as the Kanye-circa-Graduation of Indian music, or maybe the Bon Iver. What I can glean indicates that his music is shaking up India’s pop scene just as those artists’ early work did in the States. With a nom du studio that translates to “four walls” to indicate his bedroom auteur approach, he’s working outside the established system, but also building bridges. Adding the voice of beloved Bollywood playback singer Sonu Nigam to this glitchy, dreamy track, Chaar Diwaari expresses desire in a way that transcends generations while insistently remaining true to the screened-and-filtered sensibility of his own.

Juni Habel, “Stand So Still”
Folk singer Juni Habel’s home in Rakkestad, a small town close to Norway's largest river, the Glomma, is only an hour from Oslo. Yet its pastoral expansiveness contrasts considerably with bustling, cosmopolitan growth currently dominating the capitol. While Konradsen represents the chic cool of Scandinavian urbanity, Habel’s austere songs evoke the clarity of solitude. This soothing song, evocative of Northern bards from Nick Drake to Joni Mitchell, doesn’t know “whether standing still is good or bad,” Habel has said, and the calm current that governs it honors a sense of peace within ambiguity.

Blén, “Tèkètèlègn”
The Addis Ababa-based songwriter Blén runs her own label, directs her own videos and is developing her own vision of how to mix traditional elements with a classic soul sound. This forthright demand for love and loyalty swirls around the delicate sound of the kirar, a lyre once played by wandering troubadours with a banjo-like resonance. Strings and Blén’s elastic, multi-tracked voice meld with its sound to create a huge sound that Adele might appreciate.

Madra Salach, “The Man Who Seeks Pleasure”
Throughout Ireland, Scotland and the U.K., the folk scene known as “trad” has reawakened interest in ancient songs and sentiments for a new generation, and great bands from this region just keep coming. Madra Salach is the latest, a bunch of punk kids who taught themselves the ins and outs of their national songbook. Their untrained status has helped them incorporate both noise elements and a raw, indie feel within their performances, making them the toast of a scene ready for the next Lankum. Unlike many traditional artists, they also write great originals — like this keening account of desire’s darkness, which highlights Paul Banks’ no-holds-barred vocals and has made them a sensation on the festival circuit. This song is a journey.

Gabi Hartmann featuring Arat Kilo, “Les larmes d’un temps passé”
The Parisian jazz singer Gabi Hartmann was destined to be a world traveler: Her mother worked for Doctors Without Borders and her home was often filled with refugees and other visitors. She has American connections, having worked with jazz stalwarts like Jesse Harris and Julian Lage. Her style of fusion is as organic as it is impressive: On this song cycle based on a fairy tale of her own invention, she touches lightly on folk, chanson, standards, samba and African jazz — this track features the Ethio-jazz group Arat Kilo — to create a unique blend. This is the most enchanting music I’ve heard this year.

Yaelokre, “Hearken”
The Filipino-Icelandic folk artist Keath Ósk calls Yaelokre a “storytelling project,” not a band. They’re also a visual artist and a writer who has created an entire universe — actually, a universe within a universe — where a set of colorful characters act out fables that reflect Ósk’s own childhood. The sage Yaelokre unfolds through visual art, writing and song is as deep as it is playful and has attracted more than a million online devotees. Songs like “Hearken” — playful and intense, like Mitski joining the Decemberists — will draw in a casual listener, but there’s much more to explore.

Babble Hume, “Julia”
Irreverent, adventurous and a little goofy, this “indie boy band” is injecting underground spirit into South African music with tracks like this one, which starts with the immortal line, “She said she loved me in Xhosa” and rapidly gets NSFW in the most charming way. If Odd Future had started out in Johannesburg, they might have been a lot like Babble Hume.

Udo West, “Hotpants Für Männer”
Earlier I said that I don’t really believe in universals, but I’m going to backtrack: Fun is universal. And what’s more fun than a bunch of young dudes cavorting in short shorts? This song pays tribute to the exposed male thigh in a delightful power-pop mode. You’ll have to go to TikTok, though, to see the German band demonstrate what they’re singing about.

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Here are a few things that are sending me around the world this week

Bonus round! I made a playlist of all the songs mentioned above, plus others from Peru, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and Wales. I will be adding to these playlists throughout the year. Here it is on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
For a completely unexpected listening experience, check out this new project from Jake Smith of the Chicago area band The Mysteries of Life. Smith found an old box of cassette recordings of his grade school choir in his parents’ attic recently and decided to “collaborate” with them. Weird and wonderful stuff.
There’s been a little flood of songs lately about getting free by facing the truth of our sexist society. Here are some great examples: Annie Dressner’s “Dumb Boy,” The Cowgays’ “Wish I Wasn’t Gay,” Jessye DeSilva’s “Glitter Up the Dark” (shoutout to Sasha Geffen!) and Chris Casey’s “Filth.”
Salutations to my pal and NPR Music colleague Nate Chinen, celebrating three years of his fantastic newsletter The Gig! I’m excited to run around the Big Ears Festival with Nate next week. Will report back!
Is Jane from Paradise the most unsettling villain ever? Give Nicole Brydon Bloom that Emmy!

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March 21, 2026

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Here are a few things that are sending me around the world this week

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