Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of the indie rock band Low have been making music together for nearly 30 years, and married for even longer. "Honestly, if it hadn't been for the marriage, for the family ... we never would have survived this long as a band," Parker says in an interview with NPR's Lee Hale. Sparhawk adds with a laugh, "And it's not to say 'The band is just horrible, but we're keeping it together because we're married.' But I think we were able to weather difficulties. We were able to have a certain kind of unified vision ... despite being two [very] different artists."

The pair says that, even after all this time, they're still finding their sound — which often stomps, with a whispered intensity, around the boundaries of harmony and dissonance.

That particular alchemy makes HEY WHAT, their 13th studio album, a particularly fitting soundtrack for the times. On "Days Like These," the pair touches on the precarious balance required of living in the present moment. "When you think you've seen everything / You'll find we're living in days like these," they sing. Sparhawk says the track's meaning varies from person to person, but for him, it's about his life being "[this] toss between despair and absurd hope." But, "At the end of the day, I've got to land on the side of hope," he says. "I've got to land on the side of whatever it is that's moving us forward."

Listen to Lee Hale's interview with Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low in the audio player above, and stream HEY WHAT below.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.