In today's Boston Herald, Caetano Veloso lays out a complex path of inspirations for his new record, Cê, from Brazilian singers of the 1930s all the way up to the Arctic Monkeys and Animal Collective today, with stops at vintage-era Talking Heads along the way. A still more personal influence on the new sound is Caetano's son Moreno, who produced the album. Caetano performs at the Orpheum in Boston this Friday.

Two lucky Pat Metheny fans will soon find themselves the owners of a brand-new Polk Audio iSonic home-entertainment system. To celebrate the upcoming release of his new record, Day Trip, with Christian McBride on bass and drummer Antonio Sanchez, patmetheny.com announced a contest with the two Polk consoles as the grand prize and signed copies of the record for 50 runner-up winners. Everyone who pre-orders Day Trip from the site is automatically entered to win. 

Youssou N'Dour's latest album, Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take), hits stores tomorrow, and it's already earning rave reviews. Earlier this month, on NPR's All Songs Considered, Rolling Stone contributing editor Robert Christgau called Youssou and Super Étoile "the best band in the world." It seems the press in London would agree: The Financial Times, BBC Music magazine, and the Guardian's Observer Music Monthly all give the new album their highest rating, five stars, with the Observer calling it "extraordinary" and "a new pinnacle in Youssou's career." In conjunction with the record's release, Nonesuch.com unveils a new mini-site featuring video interviews with Youssou and musicologist Lucy Duran, plus songs from the new album. Read excerpts from the interview transcript here.

Nonesuch Records is happy to announce that the new album by The Magnetic Fields, Distortion, will be released on January 15, 2008. The band will perform a small
number of US tour dates in February and March. Specific details regarding venues and ticket pre-sales will be announced shortly.

The New Yorker says that Sérgio and Odair Assad's new album, Jardim Abandonado, includes works by Antônio Carlos Jobim ("exquisite miniatures of ardent desire and ineffable regret"), Milhaud, Debussy, Sérgio Assad, his daughter Clarice, and Adam Guettel, and the album's "pièce de résistance ... a transcription of 'Rhapsody in Blue.'" The Assads' arrangements "give all the pieces, whether popular or classical, an intimate sense of tonal richness and a new range of scintillating colors."

To coincide with the reissue of David Byrne's The Knee Plays—due out November 6—comes the launch of kneeplays.com. The site contains pages of never-before-released materials on the piece, including an essay by David Byrne on its origins as a collaboration with director Robert Wilson, sketches from the theatrical production, and a slideshow of stills from the premiere, as well as audio clips from the new CD. On the CD are the 13 tracks from the original score plus seven previously unavailable bonus tracks.

Laurie Anderson's 1982 album Big Science has been reissued in a remastered version available from Nonesuch Records, with new liner notes, bonus track, and video content. Pitchfork gives the album an 8.7.

Wilco is currently wrapping up work on a new studio album entitled Sky Blue Sky, which will be released on Nonesuch May 15. It is the first studio album since the group's 2004 Grammy Award–winning record, A ghost is born, and the first newly written and recorded material to feature the now firmly established band line-up of Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, Mike Jorgensen, Nels Cline, and Pat Sansone.

Listen to songs from a few of the new releases from the last couple of weeks.