What is this? What is Clojure and why do you need it in node?

Clojure is a lisp on the jvm. javascript compilers exist because people wanted to use clojure in web related projects.

It's not a javascript compiler as Clojure is a hosted language.

Can anyone explain what a hosted language is?

Basically, you take a programming language and make it work on a platform that meant to be programmed using a different PL. Clojure is hosted by design - it's not Java, but can be used to program for JVM. It ain't Javascript, yet can be used to target nodejs and browser; not an [official] CLR language, but you can write .Net programs. You can use Clojure to make Flutter apps with ClojureDart. You can integrate Python into Clojure with libpython-clj. Or write Clojure to target Erlang/OTP; or Rust; or R; There's even a clojure-like language for Lua - Fennel.

There's something about Clojure people like so much, they want it to work atop any platform.

https://github.com/Tensegritics/ClojureDart

https://github.com/clj-python/libpython-clj

https://github.com/clojerl/clojerl

https://github.com/clojure-rs/ClojureRS

https://github.com/scicloj/clojisr

https://fennel-lang.org