Donnacha Dennehy's Nonesuch debut album, Grá agus Bás, has made NPR Music's list of its 50 Favorite Albums of 2011. "Dennehy infuses hallowed Irish texts, from the esoteric sean-nós vocal tradition to the plaintive poetry of fellow countryman W.B. Yeats, with a shimmering and kaleidoscopic array of minimalist colorations," says NPR. "The result, masterfully performed by Crash Ensemble under Alan Pierson and featuring vocalists Iarla Ó Lionáird and Dawn Upshaw, is a compelling, meditative walk through time and terrain. It studies an Ireland rooted in reverence for its past, but which also brims with curiosity for its future."

The Black Keys will embark on the first leg of their North American tour this March, with shows in arenas like New York’s Madison Square Garden, Boston’s TD Garden, and Chicago’s United Center. The shows are in support of their new album, El Camino, out this Tuesday, December 6. Concert ticket and album packages will be available via the band’s site. The band will perform on Saturday Night Live tomorrow, The Colbert Report on Tuesday, and the Late Show with David Letterman on Wednesday. MTV Hive will livestream their album release show at New York’s Webster Hall on Monday.

The Black Keys are featured in a cover story in this Sunday's New York Times Arts & Leisure section and in the Times' Popcast, which look at the band's new album, El Camino, and their rise to fame. A Guardian profile also examines how the band has "become a global pop phenomenon." The Guardian gives El Camino a perfect fives stars: "They sound like a band who think they've made the year's best rock 'n' roll album, probably because that's exactly what they've done."

Malian singer-songwriter Fatoumata Diawara, whose debut EP, Kanou, was released earlier this year, performed one of the songs on the EP, “Clandestin,” for the latest in the Guardian’s series “How I wrote …” Diawara discusses the various influences behind her music including jazz, blues, rock, and her native Wassoulou, and the inspiration for “Clandestin” in particular, before performing the song. Watch the performance here.

Congratulations to all the Nonesuch artists who were nominated for the 54th Annual Grammy Awards: Ry Cooder and Emmylou Harris for Best Americana Album, Pat Metheny for Best New Age Album, Chris Thile & Michael Daves for Best Bluegrass Album, and World Circuit / Nonesuch Records artists AfroCubism for Best World Music Album. You can hear music from all the nominated albums on the new Nonesuch Radio channel "2011 Grammy Nominees."

There's still more than a month to go before 2011 comes to a close, but already the music magazines have begun to weigh in on the year's best music. American Songwriter, Paste, Uncut, Q, and Mojo have all published their lists of the Top 50 Albums of the Year, and included among them are a number of Nonesuch releases: the latest albums from Björk, Ry Cooder, Jessica Lea Mayfield, and The Low Anthem, as well as the soon-to-be-released album from The Black Keys, due out next week.

The Black Keys' new album, El Camino, is due out one week from today, December 6. No need to wait till then to hear music from the album. Click here to listen to five tracks from El Camino: "Lonely Boy," "Gold on the Ceiling," "Little Black Submarines," "Sister," and "Run Right Back." "This is both a supremely confident record and a ridiculously enjoyable one," exclaims Uncut. "El Camino feels like the dawn of greatness." Enjoy some of that greatness today by listening to the five album tracks here.

Punch Brothers have announced a North American tour for February and March of 2012 in support of their forthcoming album. The new run of shows begins with two nights at the Somerville Theatre outside of Boston on February 23 and 24 and includes stops in Burlington, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, and Minneapolis, before heading out West for sets in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Denver. The shows follow a previously announced European tour and Chris Thile's set with Michael Daves as part of Lincoln Center's American Songbook series.

The Black Keys' new album, El Camino, is out in just one week, and the record has already begun to receive rave reviews. The Independent gives the album a perfect five stars, calling it a "tremendous, hook-laden, all-killer-no-filler collection, by some distance the most powerful, compelling rock album of the year." MOJO also gives the album a perfect five stars, making it an "instant MOJO classic," and names it album of the month. "Magnificent," exclaims Q in its five-star review. "This is unvarnished rock, primal and exhilarating."

Brad Mehldau’s Art of the Trio Recordings: 1996–2001 is due out on Nonesuch in just one week, December 6, and is featured in an extensive analysis from All About Jazz. "As an essential document of jazz in the late 1990s," writes All About Jazz's John Kelman, it explains "how Mehldau so quickly became one of his generation's most influential pianists ... [R]eissues like The Art of the Trio: Recordings 1996–2001 make abundantly clear that, when the history book of the latter part of the 20th century/early part of the new millennium is written, Mehldau will, no doubt, take a well-deserved place alongside predecessors such as Bill Evans, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett as one of the most important pianists of any generation."

The Black Keys are celebrating Record Store Day's "Back to Black" Friday with the release of a special limited-edition vinyl 12-inch of their new single, "Lonely Boy" exclusively at indie music retailers. Both the lead track and the B-side, "Run Right Back," are featured on the band's forthcoming album, El Camino, which hits stores on December 6. To get an idea of what to expect on the "Lonely Boy" 12-inch and to see how the vinyl got made, check out a behind-the-scenes video here.

Björk performs songs from her new album, Biophilia, on Later ... with Jools Holland, airing Friday night on BBC Two in the UK. She performed the song "Crystalline" on Tuesday night's half-hour preview show; watch the performance here. Among the other guests on this week's shows are Red Hot Chili Peppers, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, and Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. Björk will perform at the Lollapalooza festival in Chile next year.