Russian-born pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff began setting verses from the Bible's Book of Psalms shortly after her conversion to Christianity, even before her emigration to the United States. But she waited until she had considerable experience working with jazz musicians before producing her jazz arrangements. They were first recorded on her album Better Than Gold and Silver [L&H Production, 2018], which presented ten Psalm settings in both vocal and instrumental versions. The detailed story of how Yelena Eckemoff came to set Psalms to music is included in the booklet for that album. Here, in the second installment of the Psalms set to music by Eckemoff, the interpretations are entirely instrumental, but as before Eckemoff's compositions are driven by melody, and these melodies come from a word-for-word setting of the Psalms, even in the absence of vocal versions (which exist in score form, although they are not heard on this album).

The album title and its haunting cover painting—a dramatic departure from Eckemoff's usual nature studies—are meant to speak to the contemporary mood of disorientation, a sense of uncertainty about when life will return to normal. For Yelena Eckemoff the Psalms offer a source of hope, as well as the solace of a connection to a higher power as one of possible ways of surviving in difficult times. In the composer's view that higher power could be sacred or secular, and like the earlier settings, this music is not intended to be liturgical.

While there are three tracks from 2018 release (left off of Better Than Gold and Silver due to space limitations), the bulk of this music comes from session that took place in New York City in December, 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Musicians came to the Bunker Studio in the aftermath of a record-setting snowfall that covered New York in a foot of white just a day before. The bandmates were uneasy, but also delighted to be making music with others for the first time in months, lending a special feeling to their playing. The free group improvisations lingered on, as the elation of working in a studio environment after months-long isolation encouraged all of the players to stretch out.