Its lights-dimming title notwithstanding, “The Energy Curfew Music Hour” is a brightly life- affirming family affair for Grammy-winning mandolinist, singer and composer Chris Thile, his wife, actor-director Claire Coffee, and Thile’s virtuoso band Punch Brothers.

The allure of this eight-part Audible Originals Audiobook series of hour-plus- long shows — also available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify — is heightened by the richly collaborative musical performances with James Taylor, Norah Jones, Jon Batiste, Kacey Musgraves and other guests.

“It was a dream team, if ever there was one!” said Thile, 43. “We want people to feel both comforted and energized by the show.”

“Mostly, we want the audience to be in a better mood at the end of each episode than they were at the beginning, and to see the world with slightly rosier glasses,” said Coffee, 44.

Thile rose to national prominence in the bluegrass-and-beyond San Diego trio Nickel Creek. He assumed an even higher profile in 2016 as Garrison Keillor’s handpicked successor to host the weekly PBS radio show “A Prairie Home Companion.”

Thile also hosted “Companion’s” successor, “Live from Here,” which aired from late 2017 until mid-2020. “The Energy Curfew Music Hour” is an outgrowth of its two popular predecessors and a distinct entity unto itself.

“It really challenges us,” Coffee said. “You have to find opportunities and ways to keep people online for the entire show. So, we strived to keep things focused and consistent, and surprising, at the same time.”

“The Energy Curfew Music Hour” made its streaming debut in mid- October. All eight episodes of the first season were directed by Coffee, who also reads the show’s faux news segments and voices virtually all the female roles. The scripts were co-written by her, Thile, Punch Brothers banjo player Noam Pikelny and TV veteran Rachel Axler, whose credits include “The Daily Show” and “Veep.”

Thile and his Punch Brothers are the house band, performing multiple songs on their own and with the show’s 16 musical guests. Each episode features two of the guests.

In addition to Taylor, Jones and the other big names, the lineup includes everyone from Jason Isbell and Lake Street Dive to Madison Cunningham and Sylvan Esso. Each show features an exclusively all- acoustic musical format, an approach Thile has long championed for its warmth and intimacy.

“Organic music-making is so interesting to me,” he said. “I love that music can be made — sans electricity — in a small room, which sometimes gives you as clear a look as you can get at the humanity of making music. Not that I don’t love electronic music; I do. But it is well-represented in the public forum, whereas acoustic music is less so.”

“The Energy Curfew Music Hour,” which is the brainchild of Thile and Coffee, is set in a not- too-distant but old- fashioned (in a folksy way) future, in which “diminishing resources and extreme weather have ushered in a worldwide effort to ration electricity. America has instituted a weekly ‘energy curfew’ where the power grid goes down completely and we all live electricity- free for 24 hours. ‘The Energy Curfew Music Hour’ hits the airwaves an hour before the lights go out while the nation tunes in and turns off together before the Dark Day.”

Playing off the mostly tongue-in-cheek title are the recurring references to two fictitious government entities, The Non-Essential Electronics Buyback Program and the U.S. Department of Arts and Waste Management.

The show, recorded in front of a live audience at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York, also revels in its faux sponsors.

One episode is “brought to you by Squirrel Space People, eager to provide homes for squirrels,” and “Bootstraps, the publisher of the self-help book, ‘The Power of Nodding.’ ”

These wry names and scenarios reflect a mutual appreciation for the playfully absurd by “The Energy Curfew Music Hour’s” husband-and-wife creators. “If there’s any phrase that is appropriate, it’s ‘playfully absurd,’ ” Thile said in a recent interview.

Coffee, in a separate interview, noted two other factors that served as inspirations for the tone of the show.

“I grew up with science fiction, and Chris grew up reading books by P.G. Woodhouse,” she said, speaking from the upstate New York home the couple shares with their 9-year-old son, Calvin. “And I love dreaming about what could be and what may be. I love the concepts of future worlds because they give you a path to where civilization could go and a far-reaching concept of what is possible.”

The results have delighted Thile, Coffee and the members of Punch Brothers. Ditto Bob Carrigan, the CEO of the Amazon-owned Audible, which is looking forward to presenting a second season of “The Energy Curfew Music Hour.”

“In addition to spotlighting Chris Thile and Punch Brothers’ artistry, the blend of acoustic musical genres with incredible guest artists also piqued my interest,” Carrigan said, via email.

“I was thrilled with the first season. The show represents the kind of original, boundary-pushing work that Audible intends to offer our audiences at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York and listeners across the globe.”

Thile and Coffee are hopeful that future episodes can be filmed, rather than presented only in audio form. The two California natives laughed appreciatively when asked if their personal and professional partnership bolstered the contention that only your spouse will tell you when you have bad breath, figuratively and literally.

“She’ll give it to me straight, and I’ll give it to her straight too,” Thile said. “Claire is not cowed one little bit by me. She’ll say: ‘Hey, this thing you love is not quite landing in the way you think.’ I might bluster about it a little, and then realize she’s right.”

“That’s why we work so well together,” Coffee agreed. “If something’s not working, it bothers me. We really trust each other, and that’s the relationship we’ve had since we met. So, we can defend each other’s opinion and listen to the dissent, and then find the best path forward. We definitely don’t agree all the time, but it always ends up in a better place for the disagreement.”