Music & Culture

Jake Blount's new album, The New Faith, takes spirituals and sacred blues numbers as the source material for an uneasy Afrofuturist story.

Music & Culture

Jake Blount's 'The New Faith' is a cautionary, clarifying Afrofuturist tale

10:12am September 22, 2022

by Jewly Hight

On Blount's new concept album, the singer, scholar and multi-instrumentalist reimagines field recordings of spirituals to tell a story about a time after the climate crisis has destroyed the earth.

Terri Lyne Carrington, whose new book New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets By Women Composers explores the work of foundational women jazz artists.

Music & Culture

Terri Lyne Carrington addresses women's omission from jazz canon with 'New Standards'

4:23pm September 21, 2022

After finding an abysmally low number of women artists' work within jazz's unoffical book of standards, Carrington set out to fix the problem with a book of her own.

"I feel like an instrument becomes like another limb in your body," Girl Ultra's Mariana de Miguel tells NPR Music about learning to play the guitar.

Music & Culture

The 'El Tiny' Questionnaire: Girl Ultra

4:01pm September 21, 2022

by Fi O'Reilly

The Mexican artist answers our "El Tiny" questionnaire, and tell us why the guitar has changed music making for her.

Music & Culture

Jake Blount, 'The Downward Road'

3:01pm September 21, 2022

by Joe Kendrick

At turns both spoken and sung, the song revives a Weird Old America standby.

Music & Culture

Julia Bullock, 'One by One'

10:54am September 21, 2022

by Tom Huizenga

Hear the acclaimed classical singer put an exquisite twist on a deep cut from the troubled singer-songwriter Connie Converse.

Music & Culture

The Thistle & Shamrock: New for Fall

10:22am September 21, 2022

On this episode, hear a musical tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and new fall releases with Paul Anderson, Luke Jackson, and more.

Girl Ultra performs a Tiny Desk concert.

Music & Culture

Girl Ultra: Tiny Desk Concert

8:10am September 21, 2022

by Stefanie Fernández

The music of Mariana de Miguel is always changing — and her intimate, simmering El Tiny performance is an effortless flash of all she's capable of.

Alex G's God Save the Animals careens between right and wrong, beauty and noise.

Music & Culture

The uneasy confessions of Alex G

5:01am September 21, 2022

by Hazel Cills

As a songwriter, Alex Giannascoli has long taken a mutating, playfully distorted approach. But on his new album, full of songs about morality, he astutely focuses every magic trick in his discography.

At age 22, Samara Joy is a classic jazz singer from a new generation

4:35pm September 20, 2022

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with 22-year-old jazz singer Samara Joy, who recently took to the stage of legendary club Blues Alley in Washington, D.C. Her album, Linger Awhile, is out now.

Mariah Carey performs on stage at the Wembley Arena in London in 1996.

Music & Culture

Mariah Carey says we should finally hear her secret 1995 grunge album

1:59pm September 20, 2022

by Merrit Kennedy

Carey has shared that recordings of the alternative album with her lead vocals have been found. And she hinted that the elusive project will finally be released.