On his Nonesuch Records debut album, Over That Road I’m Bound, out today, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Joachim Cooder uses the plain-spoken songs of country-music progenitor and banjo player Uncle Dave Macon as a jumping off point, tinkering with the lyrics and reworking melodies for his chosen instrument: an electric mbira. Cooder culled songs from Macon’s vast catalog and recorded them with his band and special guests: Ry Cooder, Rayna Gellert, Juliette Commagere, Sam Gendel, Glenn Patscha, Amir Yaghmai, Dan Gellert, and Vieux Farka Touré. "Warm, uplifting, and quietly spectacular," says Uncut. "A buoyant and joyful long-player," says Mojo. A new video for the album track "Heartaching Blues" may be seen here.

While most of us can't go out to take in great live music, here are some events taking place online to enjoy while staying home this weekend: Sam Amidon performs in concert from Kings Place in London on Saturday; Rhiannon Giddens, Emmylou Harris, and Yola can be see in the free online Hardly Strictly Bluegrass on Saturday; Joachim Cooder concludes his virtual in-store tour via Electric Fetus Instagram Live tonight; and Rob Mazurek performs Friday–Sunday from Marfa for his art show in Florence, Italy.

Sam Gendel’s new album, DRM, is out today on Nonesuch Records. The follow-up to his Nonesuch debut, Satin Doll, released earlier this year, DRM features Gendel’s solo musical experiments with vintage instruments such as a forty-year-old Electro Harmonix DRM32 drum machine, antique synthesizers, and a sixty-year-old nylon-string guitar—accompanied by his voice. The album includes one cover song: Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” which Gendel interprets as an instrumental, playing the melody on an old German analogue synthesizer. Also out today are short films, one for each track on the album, directed by Marcella Cytrynowicz; you can watch them here.

Sam Amidon has released his take on Taj Mahal's "Light Rain Blues," the second track from his forthcoming, self-titled album, due October 23 on Nonesuch Records, and an accompanying video, directed by Will Miller. You can watch it here. Amidon performs in concert from Kings Place in London this Saturday, streaming live.

Lake Street Dive has released a new song, "Making Do," and an accompanying video, which you can watch here. "'Making Do' is about the world that future generations are inheriting," says the band. "We are all concerned about what is happening to our planet, so the song explores what arises when we consider both our role in it and our responsibility to address it. Hopefully it comes through as a rallying cry to do the best you can with what you have." The video comprises clips from fans and a cameo by Senator Ed Markey, a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal.

Rhiannon Giddens has teamed with composer Michael Abels (Get Out) and members of the Met Opera Chorus and Nashville Ballet for a new interpretation of her song "Cry No More," which she first wrote and released in the wake of the 2015 Charleston church shooting. Following the murder of Breonna Taylor, Giddens re-recorded the track to emphasize its timeliness with added fervor, as she makes a plea for unity against injustice. You can watch the new video here.

Dave Malloy's Octet, directed by Annie Tippe, is due to get its West Coast premiere in Berkeley Repertory Theatre's spring 2021 season, a co-production with NYC's Signature Theatre, which premiered Octet in 2019. "I'm so thrilled to be returning to Berkeley with Octet, and have this show continue to evolve under the care of two of my favorite theatres," says Malloy. "It's a wonderful extension of my Signature residency, bringing this work to another coast, in a theatre that will hopefully by then be filled with smiling, healthy, socially close theatregoers.” The original cast recording is available on Nonesuch.

Congratulations to Gaby Moreno and Van Dyke Parks, whose 2019 Nonesuch album, ¡Spangled!, has been nominated for a Latin Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. ¡Spangled! celebrates the migration of song across the Americas, spanning more than a century, including a bolero from Panama, a bossa nova from Brazil, a song by Moreno, Trinidadian songwriter David Rudder's "The Immigrants," and an elegiac ballad from the Southwest US: Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, and Jim Dickinson’s “Across the Borderline." Winners will be announced on November 19.

Mountain Man has released Mountain Man Sings Simple Gifts, the latest in its series of cover singles, featuring its version of the Shaker hymn. "'Simple Gifts' is one of those incredible songs that transforms you while you sing it,” says the trio. "It's like an incantation, and it was a joy to record."

Sarah Kirkland Snider "asserts her own musical personality as a composer who knows instinctively how to write for the human voice," says Tom Huizenga in his review of her Mass for the Endangered on NPR's All Things Considered, which you can hear here. "Both the choir [Gallicantus] and the 12-member orchestra, conducted by Gabriel Crouch, respond to Snider's music with richly tailored performances ... Through her smart and resplendent exploration of age-old musical formulas, Snider's eco-inspired Mass for the Endangered is a blast from the past that resonates profoundly in the present."

Joachim Cooder, whose Nonesuch debut album, Over That Road I'm Bound, is out this Friday, will perform a series of virtual in-store performances via Instagram Live of several US independent record stores this week. The sets begin on the Instagram of Music Millennium Records in Portland, OR, tonight, followed by Salzer's Records in Ventura, Grimey's in Nashville, Boo Boo Records in San Luis Obispo, and Electric Fetus in Minneapolis on release day. Details here.

The soundtrack to the Tim Burton–directed film of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, first released on Nonesuch in 2007, will receive its first-ever vinyl edition on November 13, 2020, in a two-LP set, available to pre-order now. The film, which won the Golden Globe for Best Picture, is an adaptation by John Logan of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s musical, starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and the late Alan Rickman. "Something close to a masterpiece, a work of extreme—I am tempted to say evil—genius," exclaimed the New York Times' A.O. Scott. "This Sweeney is a bloody wonder," raved Rolling Stone's Peter Travers, "intimate and epic, horrific and heart-rending as it flies on the wings of Sondheim's most thunderously exciting score."