Tune-Yards: 2025

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

Tune-Yards' Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner are back with a bouncy sixth album, Better Dreaming. This straight-up dance record was partially inspired by the pair's need to move their bodies and shake off the stillness of Covid isolation.

The songs on Better Dreaming are also Garbus and Brenner's reaction to the abundance of negativity in the world. As they explained to me in this new "FUV Live" session, their joyful, very Tune-Yards response is meant to flood the airwaves, festivals, and their live shows with positive energy.

This fresh perspective in Tune-Yards' thought process, and their shift to deeper body-moving grooves, also connects to the couple's toddler and what it means to be a parent. They made this record with their three-year-old son, Leo, bopping along and even lending his voice to some of the recordings. (And yes, Merrill admits she'd love Leo to become a Talking Heads fan, but the Beatles' Yellow Submarine rules for him right now.)

Garbus explained that these 11 new songs came together a lot easier than expected. The couple allowed themselves to just follow whatever felt good and they had fun rambling down a rich path; the very best music and dance therapy (for me, at least) in 2025.

[Recorded: 3/4/25; Engineered by Jim O'Hara with Olivia Grant, James Higgins, and Sophia Derrig-Palumbo; produced by Meghan Suma. Videographers: Lyla Toomey, Stephanie Lane, Alena Godas, Louisa Schramm and Grace Guerra.]