After releasing four albums as The One AM Radio (his previous moniker as a musician), Hrishikesh Hirway’s love of and curiosity about making music led him to start the Song Exploder podcast. Now, on Hirway’s new EP and first recorded music under his own name, he’s taking what he’s learned from his podcasting experience—and drawing on collaboration. Every song on this new EP is co-written: three songs with old friend and collaborator Jenny Owen Youngs and the three with new friend John Mark Nelson. After a long period of fearing he’d lost the ability to write songs (his last song as a solo artist was released in 2012), Youngs—a friend he’d made through the podcasting space—invited him to co-write a song with her. From there this new partnership was born with Hirway leaning into what he’s learned over and over again from interviewing musicians for Song Exploder: that collaboration is essential to the music-making process. For Hirway, the process of making this new EP was a means of drawing from something deeply personal to him, and creating a bridge to someone else through these co-writing collaborations and features. The tracks include contributions from Baths, Jay Som, Kimbra, Dntel, and Yo-Yo Ma. The subjects of the EP are all other people. The loss of his mother hovers in the background of songs about his father, or his wife. This EP is the result of a more direct, more honest form of making; one that is more personal and intimate. – Jonny Sun