Music Features

Jacob Collier: A playful approach to creating music

3:59pm February 11, 2022

Grammy winner Jacob Collier has been called a musical phenomenon; his work is full of joy and spontaneity. He makes a case for why we should emphasize play, passion, and curiosity over practice.

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Blue Sprocket Pressing in Harrisonburg, Va. has brought a renewed capacity for manufacturing of vinyl records in the region.

Music & Culture

How Blue Sprocket Pressing put Virginia on the vinyl map

12:35pm February 09, 2022

by Desiré Moses

Central Virginia boasts no shortage of recording studios and venues, but it's a vinyl manufacturing operation in Harrisonburg that's put Virginia' s music scene on the map in a whole new way.

Reconsidering Scott Joplin's 'The Entertainer'

1:03pm February 07, 2022

by Lara Downes

The king of ragtime published his hit tune 120 years ago. Pianist Lara Downes believes the piece helped shape the future of American music.

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On Dec. 30, 2021, wildfires ignited and tore through Boulder County in Colorado. By the next day, residential streets like this one in Louisville were unrecognizable: houses leveled, cars stripped to bare metal.

Music & Culture

Listening to Burial at the end of the world

9:10am February 02, 2022

by Miguel Otárola

This winter, wildfires brought the reality of climate change to one reporter's backyard. The music of the icy British producer Burial was the only thing that could make it all make sense.

Mitski's Laurel Hell charts the sometimes infinitesimal, sometimes deeply disruptive complexities of emotion.

Music & Culture

Mitski's 'Laurel Hell' confronts the wild complexity of feeling

8:30am February 02, 2022

by Ann Powers

We're all feeling too much. Mitski's music can help. On her sixth album, she embraces dramatic emotions — and even in the depths of inner dysregulation, her clarity is remarkable.

Music & Culture

World Cafe Black History Month: New Voices

3:27pm February 01, 2022

by Bruce Warren

Drawing on numerous genres, including jazz, singer-songwriter, rock, alt-R&B, hip-hop, rock and soul, these are artists making exciting music for the current moment.

D-Vine Spirituals Volume 1 & 2 include music by Elizabeth King & The Gospel Souls, the Gospelaires, the Kingdom Aires and many more.

Music & Culture

Premiere: 'Divine Intervention - The D-Vine Spirituals Story'

10:00am February 01, 2022

by Bruce Warren

The two-volume compilation features 28 gospel soul sides, recorded for the Memphis based D-Vine Spirituals record label.

Pompeii, Le Bon's deeply romantic sixth record, relies on antique and sensual imagery.

Music & Culture

On 'Pompeii,' Cate Le Bon makes meaning from the opulent and absurd

9:00am February 01, 2022

by Sophie Kemp

The Welsh songwriter's deeply romantic sixth record draws on Dionysian imagery, letting the listener figure out what she's thinking through the twists and turns of her wonderfully oblique songwriting.

Norma Waterson receives the Lifetime Achievement award at the BBC Folk Awards at Royal Albert Hall on April 27, 2016, in London.

Norma Waterson of English folk royalty has died at 82

2:00pm January 31, 2022

by Elizabeth Blair

Waterson was from the renowned English folk family The Watersons. She was married to musician Martin Carthy. Her daughter, singer and fiddler Eliza Carthy, announced her mother's death.

"Above everything, every word, every concept still [happens] in our bodies, right?" Silvana Estrada tells NPR. "I'm a body that can create sounds like every other body."

Music & Culture

Silvana Estrada wants you to find the song in your soul

8:01am January 28, 2022

by Anamaria Sayre

The Mexican singer-songwriter employs her subversive brujeria to transcend experience on Marchita.