Last year, when the pandemic put much of Sydney, Australia–based coder and user-experience designer Adrian Ciaschetti’s work on hold, he kept thinking about a conversation he’d had with his partner before the lockdowns began in which she had told him about the night she had the best sleep of her life. It was during a camping trip to Jervis Bay, a village on the southern coast of New Scott Wales, while the gentle sound of rain pattered against her tent. Ciaschetti began to wonder how dozing in different environments might benefit a person’s quality of sleep, and how those advantages could be re-created in a moment when travel was largely banned.

His pondering resulted in Drift, an app that allows users to experience immersive soundscapes from a variety of destinations around the globe. It pairs high-fidelity recordings of natural surroundings with hypnotic video footage—shot at close range and also overhead, by drones—to showcase the locations, which are organized according to their primary sound (rain, wind, ocean, fire, lake, snow, and waterfall) so listeners can select the type of auditory experience they’d like to take in as they unwind. One might fall asleep to the wind rustling through the wilderness of South Africa’s Kruger National Park, the ebb and flow of the Indian Ocean lapping on the shores of the Bali beach town of Seminyak, or the sounds of snow falling on the roof of an igloo in Lapland, Finland, where snow-capped peaks and pine trees create a winter wonderland. Other tranquil sites include the Big Island of Hawaii, Chile’s flamingo-dotted Atacama Desert, and the majestic, often-stormy Scottish Highlands.

For those looking to learn more about the app’s featured locales, Drift provides a concise yet evocative description of each area’s topography, as well as suggestions for where to stay should the sonic snippet prompt an in-person visit. But even experienced solely through sound, from the comfort of one’s home, the settings spring to life, and offer calming comfort through the ambient white noise of nature.