k.d. lang is on The Rex Chapman Show with Josh Hopkins for an extensive conversation about her love of basketball, and the Portland Trail Blazers in particular, as well as her career in music. "Singing is an extension of your soul," lang says. "It was about opening up my true self. I don't think I would be a really good singer if I was trying to conform into a social idea of who I should be. I wouldn't sing the same." You can watch their conversation here.

Brad Mehldau’s Variations on a Melancholy Theme is due June 11, 2021, on Nonesuch. The recording features the pianist/composer and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which commissioned this orchestral version of the work—a theme and eleven variations plus a cadenza and postlude. The album also includes an encore, “Variations ‘X’ and ‘Y.'" "I imagine it as if Brahms woke up one day and had the blues," Mehldau says of the piece, which combines the classical form with jazz harmonies. "While the theme evokes melancholy, I let it be used as a springboard for other happy, wild, violent, and reckless emotions as the variations progress." You can watch a video with excerpts from the piece here.

Rhiannon Giddens’ new album, They're Calling Me Home, recorded with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, is out now on Nonesuch Records (vinyl June 11). Giddens and Turrisi, who both live in Ireland when they aren’t on tour, have been there since March 2020 due to the pandemic. The two expats found themselves drawn to the music of their native and adoptive countries of America, Italy, and Ireland during lockdown. Exploring the emotions brought up by the moment, Giddens and Turrisi decamped to Hellfire, a small studio on a working farm outside of Dublin, to record these songs over six days. Giddens has released a video for "Avalon," an original song on the album, which you can watch here.

Laurie Anderson’s 1982 debut album, Big Science, has returned to vinyl for the first time in thirty years with a new red vinyl edition, out now on Nonesuch Records. The vinyl includes the re-mastered original album first released on CD for the 25th anniversary of Big Science on Nonesuch in 2007. "It's worth considering how readily Big Science stands alone, untethered from time and place," says Uncut of its Reissue of the Month. "And how, over the course of its near-40-year existence, it has been a record that has come to acquire new resonance with each generation, now standing as one of the most influential albums of the past four decades."

Rhiannon Giddens is a guest on the latest episode of NPR's Here & Now ahead of tomorrow's release of her new album with Francesco Turrisi, They're Calling Me Home. "If you're looking for music to soothe your spirit, Rhiannon Giddens is here for you," says host Peter O'Dowd. They discuss the new album, which Giddens and Turrisi, ex-pats in Ireland, recorded during the COVID-19 lockdown, and its themes of the longing for the comfort of home and the metaphorical call "home" of death. You can hear the conversation here.

Congratulations to composer Donnacha Dennehy, who has been awarded a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship. He joins a diverse group of 184 artists, writers, scholars, and scientists to be so honored by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation this year. “I am thrilled to announce this new group of Guggenheim Fellows,” said Edward Hirsch, President of the Foundation, “especially since this has been a devastating year in so many ways. A Guggenheim Fellowship has always been meaningful, but this year we know it will be a lifeline for many of the new Fellows at a time of great hardship, a survival tool as well as a creative one. The work supported by the Fellowship will help us understand more deeply what we are enduring individually and collectively, and it is an honor for the Foundation to help the Fellows do what they were meant to do.”

Mandolinist, singer, and songwriter Chris Thile’s Laysongs will be released on Nonesuch Records on June 4, 2021. 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. Recorded in a converted upstate New York church during the pandemic, Laysongs features the three-part “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth,” which was inspired by C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters; a song Thile wrote about Dionysus; a selection from Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin; “God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot” based on Buffy Sainte-Marie’s adaptation of a Leonard Cohen poem; and a Hazel Dickens cover. Nonesuch Store pre-orders include a print of the album cover image autographed by Thile.

Record Store Day, the annual celebration of independent record stores, takes place over two RSD Drops on two Saturdays this year, and included among the special releases are: on June 12, Conor Oberst's Ruminations (Expanded Edition), a two-LP remastered edition of his acclaimed 2016 solo album with five bonus tracks; and on July 17, Randy Newman’s Roll with the Punches: The Studio Albums (1979–2017), an eight-LP set of his latest seven studio albums, including Bad Love on vinyl for the first time and Faust demos.

Lianne La Havas is on Song Exploder hosted by Hrishikesh Hirway to discuss "Can't Fight," breaking down the song from her new, self-titled album, how it evolved over seven years before she recorded it, and how she worked with co-producer Mura Masa to create the track on the album. You can hear what she had to say here, where you can also watch the official video for the track.

Laurie Anderson is on the latest episode of The Adam Buxton Podcast. She talks with Buxton about the release of her debut album, Big Science, on red vinyl this coming Friday and more, like collaborating with a supercomputer, her mind-reading experiment with David Bowie, and the importance of community. "People are making their own pods and realizing we're not living in one big world. The world is way too big for that," she says. "Community, I think, is what a lot of us long for, some people who understand them." You can hear their conversation here.

Lake Street Dive was on NPR's World Cafe to perform three songs from the band's new album, Obviously: "Hypotheticals," "Making Do," and "Being a Woman." Band mates Rachael Price and Mike "McDuck" Olson also spoke with host Raina Douris about the album, working with producer Mike Elizondo, and the band's evolving approach to songwriting. You can listen to the episode and watch the performances below.

Congratulations to Lianne La Havas, who has been nominated for a BRIT Award for Female Solo Artist for her new, self-titled album. Also nominated in the category are Arlo Parks, Celeste, Dua Lipa, and Jessie Ware. The 2021 BRIT Awards ceremony will take place on Tuesday, May 11, at The O2 Arena in London, broadcast on ITV and hosted by Jack Whitehall.