NME’s latest stars of The Cover, Night Tapes, have created an exclusive playlist to accompany the story’s launch – check it out below.
The London bedroom-pop band are on this week’s (September 8) edition of The Cover, a manifestation of NME’s commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover – you can read Night Tapes’ profile here, written by Alex Rigotti and featuring photography by Jamie Waters.
Night Tapes have curated an exclusive playlist to accompany their appearance on The Cover, which features ‘Music For The Blue Hour’. It features songs by the likes of Madonna, Connan Mockasin, Washed Out, and Snuggle, among others. Listen to the full playlist on Spotify below and on Apple Music.
In The Cover, Night Tapes discuss their journey so far – which saw them start out as housemates jamming together and has since taken them around the world – and their debut album, ‘Portals // Polarities’. The record was largely made while on their tours of the US in November 2024 and January 2025, putting the band in the country during both Donald Trump’s second presidential win and his second inauguration.
“Everyone was feeling this [sense of unrest], but nobody would talk about it,” Sam “Richie” Richards admitted. “It was tacitly underneath the surface, but you’d walk past protests… I feel like it got in [the music].”
That experience struck a chord for the group, particularly for Iiris Vesik, who was born weeks before Estonia’s four-year Singing Revolution ended in August 1991, marking the country’s independence from the Soviet Union. “Coming from Estonia, the trauma that I see from my parents and from the generations before, I feel like we’ve always talked about the inner life and how to live a better life within yourself,” she says.
“I come from a line of hermits. The fact that I’m even in London, on stage and expressing myself – it’s quite different from my family. There’s lots of war traumas that people are still processing.”
Read Night Tapes’ full Cover story here and find out who else has been on The Cover here.