The English folk artist died long before his songs found a wide audience. Joe Boyd, who produced two of Drake's three albums, is releasing an album of live performances culled from a series of Nick Drake tribute concerts.
The French pop quartet is notoriously slow to release new music. But vocalist Thomas Mars and guitarist Laurent Brancowitz say their new album, Bankrupt!, wouldn't have been the same without meticulous self-editing.
The violinist, vocalist and composer says that writing a piece like her prize-winning Partita for 8 Voices begins with "having a sound in your head that you really want to hear."
Fresh Air pays tribute to Boston with a 1988 performance by the late jazz pianist Dave McKenna. From 1981 to 1991, McKenna had a standing gig at Boston's Grand Dame Copley Plaza Hotel. He was also a loyal Red Sox fan. He died in 2008.
As the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts a new class, musicians and writers look at how influence — one of the Hall's criteria for induction — plays out in ways obvious (how Beyonce draws on Donna Summer) and not so much (jazz pianist Vijay Iyer explains how Public Enemy shaped his music).
"Accidental Racist" launched an Internet firestorm and threatened to overshadow everything else on the country singer's fine new album, Wheelhouse. Even in that polarizing song, Paisley's biggest sin is that he's well-meaning in a way that topples too easily into sentimentality.
On her first studio album, Ripely Pine, singer-songwriter Aly Spaltro transforms a batch of solo recordings into full-band arrangements that explore the juxtaposition between lyrical content and musical tone.