Dr. John is the guest on this week's Jamie Cullum show from BBC Radio 2. Dr. John, whom Cullum calls one of his "true musical heroes" and “the coolest guy in the universe,” discusses his life and career and his new album, Locked Down, which the Boston Herald names Album of the Week. "It’s voodoo rock, dense, strange, tangled, beautiful in its darkness," says the Herald. "It also adds wild, welcome new flavors to the gumbo. West African highlife grooves Fela would flip for are everywhere. ’60s Stax soul sneak in during select choruses and bridges. Shaft-style funk drops in for a few druggy intros and outros." The A.V. Club calls it "an inspired collaboration ... at once classic and modern."

Punch Brothers have launched the second leg of their North American tour. Having kicked things off with a live broadcast performance of A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor at New York’s Town Hall, the band recorded a show for NPR's Mountain Stage and set out from there for headlining shows in Pittsburgh and Lexington. The Lexington Herald Leader notes the band's "virtuosity and stylistic cunning" and finds them at their "most exciting and inventive" yet. Punch Brothers' upcoming performances include stops in Knoxville, Nashville, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, DC, and a set at MerleFest.

The Joshua Redman Trio, featuring bassist Matt Penman, a member with Redman of the band James Farm, and drummer Gregory Hutchinson, kick off a week’s residency at the Village Vanguard in New York City tonight. "Joshua Redman has lately put his tenor and soprano saxophone to work in the context of James Farm, a superarticulate postbop quartet, with strong direction from all four of its members," says the New York Times. "He returns to a more ostensibly hierarchical trio format here ... The results should be sleek and full of silvery digression." James Farm has a four-night run at the Blue Note in Tokyo next month. Redman and Brad Mehldau conclude their own duo tour next week.

The Black Keys, after selling out arenas all throughout the US, Canada, UK, and Europe, announce their long-awaited return to Australia this October. Their new album, El Camino, has already been certified Platinum there. The band made their headlining debut at an unseasonably chilly Coachella festival Friday, helping to "conquer the cold," Reuters reports. MTV says the weather "was no match for the heat of the Black Keys," and the OC Register says their set "was pure bliss." The band joins Anthony Bourdain for some Kansas City BBQ on No Reservations tonight on The Travel Channel.

Amadou & Mariam, whose new album, Folila, was released in the US last week, is the subject of a feature article in the Sunday New York Times. Even with contributions from Santigold, TV on the Radio, Nick Zinner, Jake Shears, Theophilus London, and more, Folila remains very much an Amadou & Mariam album. "[Amadou] Bagayoko’s driving guitar riffs push the music along, giving it shape, and [Mariam] Doumbia’s vocal lines," says the Times, "ride above the complex rhythms, threading the beat with hypnotic melodies." The duo will be coming to North America this summer, including a newly announced Salt Lake City show with Andrew Bird.

James Farm—a collaborative band featuring Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks, Matt Penman, and Eric Harland—released its self-titled debut album on Nonesuch almost exactly one year ago, on April 26, 2011. Last September, the band performed in the Opening Night concert of the BeanTown Jazz Festival at Boston's Berklee Performance Center. Now, on this week's episode of NPR's JazzSet, host Dee Dee Bridgewater broadcasts that performance, recorded by NPR member station WGBH in Boston.

Timothy Andres is featured in Q2 Music's "Composer Portals" series, which aims to capture "the insights and wisdom of today's composers" through exclusive audio introductions to their own pieces. In "The Witty and Reverent Musical World of Timothy Andres," the composer introduces several pieces from his debut album, Shy and Mighty. "Andres is doing contemporary classical music a service by forswearing the old-school composer’s aura—that of a tortured mystic laboring at his work," says Q2 Music. "He’s witty, conversational and seemingly secure enough in his talents to trust that we won’t mistake his good humor for a lack of seriousness."

As the Los Angeles Dodgers marked the 50th anniversary of Dodger Stadium this week, New York Times writer George Vecsey looks back at some of the team's more checkered moments and wonders whether there might be a curse tied to Chávez Ravine, the Mexican-American community that was destroyed in the '50s to build the stadium. It's a story Ry Cooder recounts in his 2005 album Chávez Ravine. Vecsey continues the conversation with a post on his blog in praise of that album. "It is about baseball and it is about business," Vecsey writes. "But mostly it is terrific music." Rolling Stone gives four stars to Cooder's book, Los Angeles Stories, calling it "superb."

Dr. John's collaboration with The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, Locked Down, landed at #33 on the Billboard 200 this week, making it, remarkably, the highest chart debut in the New Orleans legend and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s 50-plus-year career. It also debuted at #1 on Billboard's Blues Albums chart and #8 on the Rock Albums chart, and had an excellent first week outside the US as well, entering the charts in the top 100 in many countries. Locked Down has received rave reviews everywhere from SPIN and Pitchfork to The Guardian and NPR, with many echoing David Fricke’s assessment in Rolling Stone that “Dr. John has made his best album in four decades.”

Amadou & Mariam's new album, Folila, released this week in the US, has been named Album of the Week by Stereogum, which says that "at its heart it’s a euphoric psychedelic rock album." For all of its collaborators, like Santigold and TV on the Radio, Folila finds "every musical influence melting seamlessly into the whole," making for "a fun and playful artifact from two crazily gifted pop polyglots at work." The track “Dougou Badia,” featuring Santigold, is in The New Yorker's Listening Booth. Amadou & Mariam performed an unplugged version of the song "Cherie" for Daily Candy. They performed an acoustic duo version of "Wily Kataso" for NPR, which you can watch here.

The Black Keys will be headlining the 2012 Lollapalooza festival, which runs from August 3 to 5 in Chicago's Grant Park. Their fellow headliners include the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Black Sabbath, and Jack White. Also performing are Amadou & Mariam, whose new album, Folila, is out in the US this week. The Black Keys headline Coachella this week and next then launch the next leg of their North American arena tour with special guests Arctic Monkeys.

Senegalese singer-songwriter Cheikh Lô has returned to North America to play a series of venues and festivals featuring music from his critically acclaimed fifth album, Jamm. This will be the first opportunity for North American audiences to hear Lô performing songs from the album since its release in July 2011. Its "easy rhythms underpin music of warmth and grace," says the Washington Post. The tour begins in Washington, DC, tonight and includes a performance at Carnegie Hall in New York, sets at the New Orleans Jazz Fest and Louisiana International Festival, and shows in St. Louis, Ann Arbor, Chapel Hill, Ithaca, Montreal, and Toronto.