Aria Code, the Rhiannon Giddens–hosted podcast from The Metropolitan Opera and WQXR, returns for its third season today. The new season opens with "Nessun dorma," from Puccini's opera Turandot. Giddens hears from conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, writer Anne Midgette, and Dr. Michael Cho, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who has been on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic and is a violist with the Longwood Symphony Orchestra and the National Virtual Medical Orchestra. You can hear the episode here.

"What do you think about when you think about David Byrne?" asks Debbie Millman, introducing the guest on the latest episode of her podcast, Design Matters. "The Talking Heads, no doubt, and some of the most joyful pop music ever, but there’s so much more to the man. Over the years, he has collaborated with artists in dance, theater, film and television, which has resulted in him winning an Oscar, many Grammy awards, and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Before the pandemic hit, he had a Broadway show called American Utopia, which has been turned into a film directed by Spike Lee, and a book by the same name illustrated by the great Maira Kalman. He joins me today to talk about his extraordinary life, making so many extraordinary things." You can hear their conversation here.

Dan Auerbach was a guest on WNYC's All of It with Alison Stewart, part of the show's week-long series showcasing this year's Grammy nominees ahead of the awards ceremony this Sunday. Auerbach is nominated for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, for several recordings on his Easy Eye Sound label, including Early James's Singing for My Supper. You can hear their conversation here.

Lake Street Dive bassist Bridget Kearney spoke with NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday about "Being a Woman," the newly released song she wrote for the band's upcoming album, Obviously, out this Friday. "This song is personal," Kearney tells NPR. "I'm 35 years old, and I think that I came to identify as a feminist sort of later in life. It was something that I was somewhat resistant towards because I didn't want to think that my identity was something that was disempowered. So I was trying to pretend that these issues didn't exist and then eventually realized that that wasn't helpful. So, writing this song and putting it out is, I think, kind of adding my voice to that chorus of the women that came before me who were shouting, 'Things need to change.'"

Louis Andriessen’s The only one is out now on Nonesuch Records. This world premiere performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic was recorded live at Walt Disney Concert Hall in May 2019, conducted by LA Phil Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen, with solo vocalist Nora Fischer. Two artistic discoveries influenced Andriessen as he wrote The only one: a collection of poems by the Flemish poet Delphine Lecompte from The animals in me, and the work of Nora Fischer, an Amsterdam–based singer known for developing dynamic creative projects that fuse classical and pop music. You can watch a short clip from it here.

In anticipation of International Women’s Day, Lake Street Dive has released "Being a Woman," the latest track from their new album, Obviously, out next week. Written by the band’s bassist Bridget Kearney, the track speaks to gender inequality and the societal discrimination women face on a daily basis. "Happy Women’s History Month! This one goes out to all of the hard-working women of the world,” says Kearney. “We are thankful to the many voices that came before us shouting for gender equality, without whom we may never have had this microphone in which to say, ‘It's not fixed yet!’ With this song, we humbly add our voices to that chorus." The band will perform on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on March 11 and CBS This Morning: Saturday Sessions on March 13.

Rhiannon Giddens has released "Waterbound," a second track from her upcoming album with Francesco Turrisi, They’re Calling Me Home, out April 9. The song is a traditional fiddle tune first recorded in the 1920s that includes the refrain, "Waterbound, and I can't get home, down to North Carolina," capturing a central theme of the new album: longing for the comfort of home and family in this time of prolonged isolation. The video, which you can watch here, was filmed in Ireland and includes footage from the recording session that took place in a small studio on a working farm outside Dublin. The song and video also feature Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu. Giddens says, “‘Waterbound’ is a song I learned a long time ago and it brings me forcefully home to North Carolina when I sing it, and considering that I am, indeed waterbound, and have been for a long time, it's a rare moment when a folk song represents exactly my situation in time.”

Joachim Cooder was joined by his father, Ry Cooder, for a performance streamed from the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on Saturday. They performed songs from Joachim Cooder's Nonesuch Records debut album, Over That Road I'm Bound. "My hope for tonight's performance is: we do something maybe that we've never done before," he says. "I like to let things take their own course and have each show be a little different. So I would like all my things to work and have everybody see something that they haven't seen somewhere else." You can watch the program, which also includes a set from Amythyst Kiah, here.

Lake Street Dive celebrated the 50th anniversary of Carole King's album Tapestry last month with a performance from band members Rachael Price, Bridget Kearney, and Akie Bermiss of the album track "So Far Away" for Variety magazine. King replied on Twitter: "Love this!" You can now watch it here.

Darius Marder, the director of the film Sound of Metal, is on The Backstory podcast to discuss the film and its sound design with host Jason Bentley and fellow guest Ludwig Göransson, composer of the scores to Black Panther, Tenet, and The Mandalorian. You can hear their conversation here. "Early accolades for sound design, and rightly so," Bentley says of Sound of Metal. "The use of sound in this film is a powerful tool to support the storytelling. Darius wrote the screenplay with his brother Abraham, who also contributed music, and whose song 'Green' for the film has been shortlisted for an Oscar nomination."

Laurie Anderson’s 1982 debut album, Big Science, returns to vinyl for the first time in thirty years with a new red vinyl edition due April 9 on Nonesuch Records. The vinyl includes the re-mastered album first released on CD for the 25th anniversary of Big Science in 2007 and is available to pre-order now. Big Science foresaw the future, mixing performance art, pop, and electronics, most hauntingly on the hit single, “O Superman.”

Composer, pianist, and singer Gabriel Kahane is a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Charles Ives Fellowship. He is one of eighteen recipients of the Academy's 2021 music awards. Harmony Ives, the widow of Charles Ives, bequeathed to the Academy the royalties of Charles Ives’s music, which has enabled the Academy to give awards in composition since 1970, including two Charles Ives Fellowships of $15,000 each. The awards will be presented virtually at the Academy's Ceremonial on May 19.