Caroline Shaw was on BBC Radio 3’s This Classical Life to talk with host Jess Gillam about some of their favorite music, including works by Clara Schumann, Mark Guiliana, Scott Joplin, Sarah Vaughan, Josquin des Prez, Stanley Myers, Kae Tempest, and Schubert. You can hear the music and conversation here. Evergreen, Shaw’s new album with Attacca Quartet, has been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and made several year’s best lists, including NPR Music's 10 Best Classical Albums of 2022 (“some of the finest string quartet music of recent times ... irresistible”).

Rhiannon Giddens is on Sing for Science, the science and music podcast from Talkhouse. The focus of the episode, titled “At the Purchaser’s Option: Listening for the African Diaspora in American Music,” is the opening track to her 2017 album, Freedom Highway. Giddens, host Matt Whyte, and ethnomusicologist Dr. Portia Maultsby discuss "At the Purchaser's Option," the African origins of the banjo, and the connection between African and African American music. You can hear it here.

Classical singer Julia Bullock's solo debut album, Walking in the Dark, which NPR Music named one of The 10 Best Classical Albums of 2022, is out now. Bullock is joined on the album by London’s Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Christian Reif for Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and an aria from John Adams’s El Niño. With Reif on piano, she also performs a traditional spiritual and songs by Connie Converse, Oscar Brown Jr., Billy Taylor, and Sandy Denny. Bullock is "one of the singular artists of her generation," says the New York Times, "a singer of enveloping tone, startlingly mature presence and unusually sophisticated insight into culture, society and history.”

Makaya McCraven stopped by KEXP in Seattle to perform four songs from his new album, In These Times: "Dream Another," "In These Times," "The Knew Untitled," and "This Place That Place." He was joined by Jeff Parker on guitar, Junius Paul on bass, and De'Sean Jones on saxophone, flute, and EWI. You can watch the session, including a conversation with host Marco Collins, here.

Hurray for the Riff Raff performed several songs from their new album, LIFE ON EARTH, at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, last month as part of NPR Music’s 15th anniversary celebrations. You can watch the set here. LIFE ON EARTH made NPR Music’s list of The 10 Best Rock Albums of 2022 and NPR Music’s Ann Powers list of The 20 Best Albums of 2022. "LIFE ON EARTH sounds like what Segarra describes as ‘nature punk,'" Powers writes, "cosmic in feel, anthemic in reach."

The Black Keys have announced initial details of the European leg of their Dropout Boogie Tour starting in June. Following shows in Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the band will be joined by special guests Spoon for concerts in Paris, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Cologne, and Hamburg. The Black Keys will play festival sets in Italy, Portugal, and Spain in July. Pre-sale tickets for the June dates will be open to the band’s fan club, The Lonely Boys & Girls Club, on December 13; general on-sale begins December 16. This marks The Black Keys’ first European tour since 2015. 

Cécile McLorin Salvant performs "Moon Song"—from her Grammy-nominated Nonesuch debut album, Ghost Song—in a new video recorded during her two-night engagement at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center this past spring. The video features Salvant along with pianist Sullivan Fortner, percussionist Keita Ogawa, guitarist Marvin Sewell, flutist Alexa Tarantino, and bassist Yasushi Nakamura, all of whom are on the album. You can watch it here.

Rhiannon Giddens will tour the UK this spring, joined by multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. The tour starts in Aberdeen on April 27, with shows in Edinburgh, Gateshead, Perth, London, Norwich, Birmingham, and Essex. They follow the last two concerts of Giddens' Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall and bookend the Boston Lyric Opera run of Omar, her opera with Michael Abels, in May. They precede the 2023 Ojai Festival, of which she is Music Director, in June, and a trip to Italy for festival sets in Spoleto and Umbria in July.

The first recording of Steve Reich’s Runner and Music for Ensemble and Orchestra, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted by Susanna Mälkki, released on CD and digitally on Nonesuch Records in September, is now available on vinyl. The New York Times calls Runner "a calmly luminous orchestral piece with the pulsating, propulsive rhythms that animate much of Mr. Reich’s music." The San Francisco Chronicle says that Music for Ensemble and Orchestra "is a beautiful and dramatically charged masterpiece, but its impact goes even further than that."

A digital deluxe version of acclaimed singer, songwriter and musician Molly Tuttle’s Grammy-nominated album with her band Golden Highway, Crooked Tree, is out today on Nonesuch. Alongside the original thirteen songs, the deluxe edition features new renditions of the Grateful Dead’s “Dire Wolf,” and the traditional folk song “Cold Rain and Snow,” also made famous by the Grateful Dead, as well as live versions of album tracks “Dooley’s Farm” (feat. special guest Jerry Douglas) and “Castilleja,” both recorded at Nashville’s historic Station Inn. To celebrate the deluxe release, Tuttle has shared a new video for album track “Nashville Mess Around," which can be seen here.

Rachael & Vilray have released an animated video for their song “Just Me This Year,” which speaks to the pleasures of spending the winter holidays alone after a welcomed romantic breakup. The track, released earlier this fall, appears on their forthcoming album I Love a Love Song! out January 13. You can watch the video, directed by Mertcan Mertbilek, here.

The Staves' debut album, Dead & Born & Grown, turned ten in November, and to mark the occasion, Nonesuch Records releases the album on 180-gram recycled colored vinyl in the US today. This follows its UK release in October. Produced with Glyn and Ethan Johns (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones), Dead & Born & Grown was met with great critical acclaim and set the Staveley-Taylor sisters on the way to becoming one of the UK’s most celebrated indie exports. The recycled vinyl is made from 100% PVC recycled material, using waste material and clippings from previous record pressings, resulting in a unique color combination for each LP.