NPR Music

Maya Hawke harnesses life's mayhem on 'Chaos Angel'

XPN | By Raina Douris,

Published May 31, 2024 at 11:49 AM CDT

You could think of making art as a way of harnessing chaos. Turning the mayhem of life into something beautiful. For Maya Hawke, whose life has been busy and public since she was a child, making art has always been a daily, grounding practice.

Hawke has just released her third album, Chaos Angel, but you also may recognize her as an actress: She's starred in Stranger Things and in films like Once Upon A Time... in Hollywood and Asteroid City. Perhaps you recognize her because she bears a resemblance to both her parents, actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman.

In this session, Hawke talks about how the arts have been central to her world ever since she can remember, and about her new album, which also features her brother, Levon Hawke. You'll also hear Hawke play some of her songs live, in a performance recorded for World Cafe at the Figure 8 studio in Brooklyn.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

NPR Music

Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.

Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).

See stories by Kimberly Junod