The Brad Mehldau Trio’s new album, Ode, with 11 previously unreleased songs composed by Mehldau, is out now. The album is "full of seductive melody, and in its blues and bop references and surging swing, it's explicitly jazzy, too," says the Guardian in a four-star review. "It bears a lot of replaying." The Observer calls the new songs "absorbing," noting that "Mehldau is so brilliant at 'recomposing' standards that his remarkable talent as a composer is often overlooked." The Ottawa Citizen says: "A potent combination of deep lyricism, questing creativity and bar-raising virtuosity, Ode consistently provides the frissons that Mehldau fans have come to expect and that lesser pianists wish they could evoke."

Punch Brothers' new album, Who's Feeling Young Now?, is now available on vinyl. The LP comes on two discs of 140-gram, audiophile-quality vinyl and includes four additional Punch Brothers–penned tunes available exclusively on the vinyl album. To celebrate the CD's release last month, Punch Brothers gave a special invitation-only record-release show at Rockwood Music Hall in New York City; watch three songs from the set here: "Movement and Location," "Clara," and "Who's Feeling Young Now?"

The film The Hunger Games is due out this week and with it a companion album, The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond, out today. The album, produced by T Bone Burnett, features songs inspired by the film by artists like Arcade Fire, Neko Case, Taylor Swift, The Decemberists, and three Nonesuch artists: Carolina Chocolate Drops, Punch Brothers, and The Low Anthem. "Burnett has managed to create a deftly meditative soundtrack to the movie adaption of the best-selling book," says The Huffington Post, "bringing together big names and indie darlings of all stripes."

The Brad Mehldau Trio returns with Ode, out this week in the UK and this coming Tuesday in North America. Ode earns five-stars from the Daily Telegraph, which says it "shows his inventive powers are as fresh as ever," and the Financial Times, which calls it "benchmark piano-trio jazz." The BBC raves: "All three players are articulating a ceaseless stream of fresh ideas throughout this electrically energised session." MusicOMH calls it "an often scintillating and always joyful listen from beginning to end." Early US reviews agree. The New York Times finds "resonant lyricism, floating locomotion, a harmonic approach that brings depth to simple structures and sleekness to the more complex ones." The Chicago Tribune hears Mehldau "in prime form as composer, improviser and bandleader."

The new album featuring works by Krzysztof Penderecki paired with those they inspired by Jonny Greenwood is out now. MusicOMH says: "The four pieces here make an album that carries a powerful impact, as well as recognising the obvious talents of both composers in writing for the string orchestra." The music will be performed at London's Barbican Hall on March 22 by the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra, the artists on the recording, with Penderecki conducting his pieces and Marek Moś conducting Greenwood's, as on the album.

In 2004, Caetano Veloso curated a week of special concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall and invited his longtime friend and collaborator David Byrne to join him for the show heard on the new album Caetano Veloso and David Byrne: Live at Carnegie Hall, out now. The album earns four stars from Glide, the Guardian, and the Observer, which calls it "an entrancing showcase of their respective talents ... and even on disc a sense of joy and spontaneity is palpable." The Herald Scotland says the album "leaves the listener grinning from ear to ear." The New York Daily News includes it among the best new albums. The Seattle Times calls the concert "an absolute jewel."

Nonesuch Records will make a series of special releases available on Saturday, April 21, in honor of the fifth annual Record Store Day, a celebration of the unique culture surrounding over 700 independently owned record stores in the USA and hundreds of similar stores internationally. Included are a deluxe vinyl edition of The Black Keys' El Camino; Dr. John's new album, Locked Down, on vinyl; a 3CD/DVD set of Billy Bragg & Wilco's Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions; and limited-edition 7" vinyl singles of Sara Watkins covering The Everly Brothers and Carolina Chocolate Drops taking on Run-DMC.

The new album pairing works by Krzysztof Penderecki and the works they inspired by Jonny Greenwood is due out next week and is streaming in full all this week as an NPR First Listen. "The results are ear-tingling," says NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas. "What we hear on this album is a meeting of two artistic visionaries connected in a real dialogue, the decades separating their work and their chronological ages all but collapsed and deflated."

Amadou & Mariam are set to release Folila, their first studio album since Welcome to Mali, on April 10. The new album, helmed by longtime producer Marc-Antoine Moreau, epitomizes the duo's embrace of collaboration, with contributions by Santigold, TV on the Radio, Nick Zinner, Theophilus London, Bassekou Kouyate, and others. It is now available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store. Hear the album track "Dougou Badia" and watch the couple's performance of "Wily Kataso" for the Guardian here.

On the acclaimed Mermaid Avenue albums, Billy Bragg and Wilco put music to lyrics by folk legend Woody Guthrie for which he had not written music or made recordings. Tweedy and Bragg were "the perfect pair to conclude that Guthrie ... was a prophetic rock-and-roller with a whole lot to say," said the New York Times. On Record Store Day, April 21, Nonesuch will release Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions, which includes the original two volumes of Mermaid Avenue (the second re-mastered); a third volume with 17 previously unreleased recordings from those sessions; the 1999 documentary on the sessions, Man in the Sand; and a 48-page booklet with new liner notes by Nora Guthrie, lyrics, archival photographs, and facsimiles of lyric sheets and sketches by Woody Guthrie. Pre-orders include an exclusive print of Guthrie’s lyric sheet for “Hoodoo Voodoo.”

Carolina Chocolate Drops’ new album, Leaving Eden, is out today. Rolling Stone, in a four-star review, says that the album “grows handsome fruit from a nation's tangled roots,” calling the record “a lesson in 21st-century American folk.” The  Los Angeles Times notes that “band spends much of this very fresh-sounding album aligning itself with traditional values.” USA Today notes that the group “may take their cues from 1920s string- and jug-band music, but they're simply a great band.”

Punch Brothers' new album, Who's Feeling Young Now?, is out now. To mark the occasion, the album is streaming in full via Spinner and MSN Music. MSN gives the album four stars and says: "This forward-thinking string band plies fresh ideas with traditional instruments, yielding a fusion as quirky yet accessible—and uniquely American—as Talking Heads." The A.V. Club gives the album an A-, saying their songs exist "both out of time and in the moment thanks to its youthful, gung-ho approach to timeless sounds."