Natalie Merchant has released the video for "Sister Tilly," from her new album, Keep Your Courage. The track is dedicated to Joan Didion and pays homage to the generation of women who influenced Merchant in the 1960s and ’70s when she was growing up. You can watch the video, directed by Matthew Shattuck and featuring archival footage from the era, here. Merchant begins a European tour next week. She hosts a new workshop at Fondazione Prada’s Accademia dei bambini in Milan in January and resumes her US West Coast tour in May.

Kronos Quartet’s award-winning 1990 album Black Angels will be released on vinyl on February 16, 2024, to coincide with Kronos Quartet: Five Decades, a year-long celebration of the quartet’s 50th anniversary. First released in 1990, the album features George Crumb’s title piece, which inspired David Harrington to found the quartet in 1973, and works by Charles Ives, István Márta, Thomas Tallis, and Dmitri Shostakovich. The fourth side of the vinyl is an etching of an illustration created especially for this purpose by Matt Mahurin, whose work is featured on the original album cover. The Evening Standard included Black Angels among its “100 Definitive Classical Albums of the 20th Century.”

Rhiannon Giddens recently gave an intimate performance at Racket in New York City for WFUV’s FUV Live. She spoke with host Alisa Ali about her new album, You’re the One, and more, and was joined by her band to perform several songs from it. You can now watch the performance of the album tracks “Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad,” “You Louisiana Man,” and “Yet to Be” below and listen to the complete session at wfuv.org.

Rhiannon Giddens was on The Daily Show to talk with guest host Michael Kosta about her career, winning the Pulitzer Prize in Music, and her song "Another Wasted Life," from her new album, You're the One, which she also performed on the show. The song aims to raise awareness for the stories and voices of those who have experienced the injustices of the criminal legal system. She partnered with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project on a fundraising initiative and a music video for the song featuring 22 wrongfully convicted people, clients of the organization, who collectively spent more than 500 years in prison for crimes they did not commit.

Rhiannon Giddens was on WNYC’s All of It with Alison Stewart to talk about and share songs from her new album, You’re the One. You can hear their conversation here. This Saturday, Giddens—who won this year's Pulitzer Prize in Music for her opera Omar with Michael Abels and hosts the Aria Code podcast from WNYC partner station WQXR and The Metropolitan Opera—will host The Met Opera’s Live in HD broadcast of Jake Heggie's opera Dead Man Walking, based on Sister Helen Prejean’s memoir.

Natalie Merchant is the guest on the latest episode of Songcraft, the podcast “about the creators of lyrics and music that stand the test of time.” She joins hosts Scott B. Bomar and Paul Duncan for an extensive conversation about her new album, Keep Your Courage, and music from throughout her career. You can hear their conversation here.

"This is my reaction to being assaulted by information," composer and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire says of his Nonesuch debut album, Owl Song, due December 15, featuring a trio with two musicians he has long admired, guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Herlin Riley. "This record is me wanting to create a safe space. Part of the challenge was: Can I create something that's oriented around open space, the way some of the records I love the most do?" You can hear "Owl Song 1" here now. The New York Times says: "Akinmusire has been making some of the most intimate, spellbinding music of his career." Pitchfork has called his work "music that seeks peace not just despite a world of unrest, but within it."

Yussef Dayes performs “Tioga Pass,” from his debut solo album, Black Classical Music, in a new video, filmed in Malibu by German Vizcarra, with Dayes on drums, Rocco Palladino on bass, Venna on saxophone, Elijah Fox on piano, and Alexander Bourt on congas and percussion. You can watch it here. Dayes and his band play a sold-out show at London's Royal Albert Hall tomorrow, before heading out on a tour of the US next month, beginning at Warsaw in Brooklyn.

"Sorry I Haven’t Called was worth the wait, and another cool stylistic leap," Talkhouse host Josh Modell says of the new album from Vagabon (aka Lætitia Tamko), who talks with Jaboukie on the show. “Sorry I Haven’t Called, which was partly produced by former Vampire Weekend guy Rostam, takes things even a step further, with an eye toward something even bigger and bolder. And even though the songs were inspired by a dark time in Tamko’s life, they turned out incredibly buoyant and upbeat.” You can hear the episode here.

Makaya McCraven, whose album In These Times, was released a year ago last month and is currently performing music from the album on tour across the US, has just released a video of him performing the track “This Place That Place” live at Public Records in Brooklyn ahead of the album’s release. McCraven had assembled a unique ensemble with a string quartet to perform special arrangements of songs from his new album for the Brooklyn event captured in the video by director Matthew Edginton. You can watch it here.

David Byrne returned to Late Night with Seth Meyers to talk about Here Lies Love, his musical with Fatboy Slim about the rise and fall of the Philippines’ notorious Imelda Marcos and the People Power Revolution, now on Broadway with a historic all-Filipino cast. They also discuss the famed 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, directed by Jonathan Demme, back in theaters now, and Fred Armisen’s David Byrne impression. You can watch their conversation here.

Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, who took home three IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards last week, have released a video for “Alice in the Bluegrass,” from their new album, City of Gold. You can watch the video, made by Joshua Britt & Neilson Hubbard at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studios, where the album was recorded, here. They kick off their Western US tour this weekend.