When the pandemic prevented Nyokabi Kariũki from traveling to Kenya from the U.S., she used field recordings of beloved places back home to conjure a space of sonic refuge. On her upcoming follow-up Feeling Body, she uses sound to similarly therapeutic ends. Kariũki recorded the album as a reflection of her experience with long COVID, its six songs channeling a path from illness to recovery.

“Nazama” is the album’s closing track, and, like those preceding it, it is constructed primarily out of her own voice. The song sounds almost a cappella at first; the bittersweet swirl of Kariũki’s gauzy, multi-part harmonies seem to fuse gospel and ambient. But a powerful sub-bass rumble runs beneath her voice, along with patient bowed strings and, faintly, the sound of rattling river stones. The title means “to sink” in Swahili, but the song’s motion is buoyant and unburdened, luminous with a lightness of being. She sings of praying by the ocean and invokes the River Jordan, a body of water with deep spiritual connotations. The song’s final line is part vow, part celebration: “I’m getting better,” she sings, her voice high and clear as she lingers over the final word. Part hymn of gratitude and part song of self-affirmation, “Nazama” radiates healing warmth.