The Black Keys' Delta Kream is out today on Nonesuch Records. The album celebrates the band’s roots and features eleven Mississippi hill country blues songs by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, among others. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Delta Kream at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover. The band performs on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and on Later… with Jools Holland tonight.

Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion have released the title track to their forthcoming album, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, due June 25, as well as a video for the track made by Shaw, which you can watch here. Shaw says of the track, a duet with Sō's Josh Quillen: "Josh is an amazing steel pan player. I wrote out these odd little chords and said, ‘Here’s essentially a kind of verse and a kind of chorus. Otherwise, we’re loose. Here’s the harmonic progression.’ An hour before, I went into a free writing zone, very much inspired by James Joyce."

After a year’s hiatus, Kronos Performing Arts Association’s Kronos Festival returns June 11–18, expanding the annual San Francisco–based event into the virtual sphere with free online presentations: world premieres; many of Kronos’ signature works, including music by Clint Mansell, George Crumb, Frank Zappa, Terry Riley, and Vladimir Martynov; and pieces commissioned for Kronos’ Fifty for the Future project. The festival also features an all-ages program and a series of short films. Kronos will also headline composer Ellen Reid’s Soundwalk, a self-guided, GPS-enabled public art work, in Golden Gate Park.

Pianist/composer Tigran Hamasyan releases "Revisiting the Film," featuring drummer/composer Morgan Ågren, today on Nonesuch. You can hear it here. The new single is a variation on "Our Film," a track from his 2020 album, The Call Within. "For years I have been a big fan of Morgan and finally had a chance to collaborate," Hamasyan says. "I hope this is going to be the beginning of our dialogue."

k.d. lang has released “If I Were You (Main Mix),” a track from her forthcoming album, makeover, and a video for it, which can be seen below. The 1995 remix was produced by Junior Vasquez, and the remix video was edited by Dean Kensler from Kevin Kerslake’s original “If I Were You” music video.

Rhiannon Giddens is a guest on Kyle Meredith With..., an interview series hosted by WFPK’s Kyle Meredith for Consequence. "One of the all time greats," Meredith says of his guest. They discuss her new album with Francesco Turrisi, They're Calling Me Home, which Meredith calls "powerful and beautiful." You can watch their conversation here.

Congratulations to Joshua Redman and Tigran Hamasyan, who have been nominated for the Deutscher Jazzpreis 2021 in their respective categories: Wind Instruments International for Redman and Piano/Keyboards for Hamasyan. The Jazzpreis is a new jazz award launched by the German government's Commissioner for Culture and Media. Winners will be announce in a livestreamed awards ceremony on June 3.

Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi have released a new video for their rendition of the traditional American folk song “O Death,” from their new album, They're Calling Me Home. The video features illustrated vignettes of a story about death painted by Maeve Clancy, an Irish crankie roll artist. Giddens explains, “Crankies are a pre-electricity technology that pair a visual narrative, usually painted on a long piece of paper or cloth, 'cranked' by hand to the timing of the song.” You can watch it here.

Chris Thile has released a new song, "Dionysus," from his forthcoming album, Laysongs, due June 4 on Nonesuch; you can hear it here. Laysongs is his first truly solo album: just Thile, his voice, and his mandolin, on new recordings of six original songs and three covers, all of which contextualize and banter with his ideas about spirituality. The album was recorded in a converted upstate New York church during the pandemic.

Composer/multi-instrumentalist Jeff Parker will tour on a double bill with guitarist/singer-songwriter Steve Gunn in December. The fifteen-city tour begins at Thalia Hall in Chicago, heads throughout the Midwest and East Coast, and culminates at Bowery Ballroom in NYC. You can find details here.

The Black Keys have released "Going Down South," the second single from their forthcoming tenth album, Delta Kream. The album celebrates the band’s roots and features eleven Mississippi hill country blues songs by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, among others. Auerbach says of the song: “That was one of R. L. Burnside’s hits! We strayed a little from the original on our version with the falsetto and percussion, but we liked how it sounded in that moment. It’s become one of my favorites on the album.” You can watch the video, directed by Ryan Nadzam and filmed at Jimmy Duck Holmes’ Blue Front Café, the oldest active juke joint in America, here. The band will perform on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and BBC Two's Later... with Jools Holland on the album's release day, May 14. 

In honor of National Teacher Appreciation Day this Tuesday, May 4, the children at Irving Park Elementary School in Greensboro, NC, chose to thank their teachers with a special performance of Natalie Merchant's "Kind and Generous" you can watch here.