Ben Folds returns to NBC tonight as a judge on Season 2 of The Sing-Off, the search for America's best a cappella group, premiering tonight at 8 PM ET. The New York Times calls Folds "one of the better reality-competition judges television has seen: knowledgeable, engaging, constructive rather than cruel." The Washington Post says, unlike other, more cynical TV competitions, the goal here is "the fleeting, ephemeral beauty of a song well sung." Folds tells Spinner: "People singing together is very underrated and very necessary."

Natalie Merchant's Leave Your Sleep has won the 2010 fRoots Critics Poll for Best Packaged Album of the Year. "Artistic skill can produce a must-have artefact of beauty, along with enhancing the listening pleasure by providing ambience and information," says fRoots, calling Leave Your Sleep "a classic example of how to do things well." Merchant also made the poll's list of the Top 20 New Albums of 2010, along with Carolina Chocolate Drops, Ali Farka Touré, Toumani Diabaté, AfroCubism, and Cheikh Lô.

Wanda Jackson recently spoke with BlackBook magazine about her pioneering career and her forthcoming, Jack White-produced album, The Party Ain't Over. BlackBook says, "artists from Carrie Underwood to Cat Power should thank the so-called 'First Lady of Rock and Roll' for paving much of their way." Jackson talks about her early days performing with (and dating) Elvis Presley; the challenges of being a woman in rock at the time; and how times have changed since then.

Louis Andriessen is the focus of a week-long Immersive Composer Spotlight from Q2, the online new-music station of New York's Classical WQXR, including broadcasts of De materie, De staat, De tijd, Rosa: The Death of a Composer, and Writing to Vermeer. "Descriptions of Andriessen's style abound with the same complex energy as his ecstatic, rhythmic experimentations," says Q2. "So sit back from the computer for a moment; his music rewards full attention and doesn't take background listening lightly."

Ben Folds and his band are set to tour Australia in May 2011 in support of Lonely Avenue, his collaborative album with Nick Hornby. Folds will play Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth in May 2011. Tickets go on sale beginning at 9 AM local time on Tuesday, December 14. The Ben Folds Fan Club will have the opportunity to purchase presale tickets beginning Wednesday, December 8, at 2 PM AEDT.

The Low Anthem—fresh off a string of shows with Emmylou Harris and just as the band launches a five-date tour with the Carolina Chocolate Drops this weekend—has confirmed an initial run of 2011 worldwide tour dates in support of the band's forthcoming album, Smart Flesh, due out February 22. The band is offering the song "Ghost Woman Blues," from Smart Flesh, as a free download beginning today. You can download it here.

Jessica Lea Mayfield's Tell Me, due out February 8 and available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store, is among Stereogum's picks of the 50 Most Anticipated Albums of 2011. USA Today's Pop Candy blogger Whitney Matheson calls it the "Best thing I heard" this week. "I'm already a fan," she writes. "Love her." In addition to her previously announced tour dates with Justin Townes Earle, Mayfield has signed on for the 35 Conferette taking place March 10–13.

Congratulations to all the Nonesuch artists who were nominated for the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, announced last night by The Recording Academy: The Black Keys, Laurie Anderson, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Punch Brothers, Stephen Sondheim, and World Circuit / Nonesuch Records artists Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté. Together, these artists' 2010 releases garnered an impressive 11 nominations, including a remarkable six nominations for The Black Keys' latest Nonesuch release, Brothers. Hear music from all the nominees on Nonesuch Radio.

Just in time for the holidays, John Adams will conduct the San Francisco Symphony in three performances of his Nativity oratorio, El Niño, at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall, starting tonight, launching Adams's two-week residency there. Dawn Upshaw will reprise the role she originated and performed on the Nonesuch recording, tonight and Saturday. Jessica Rivera, who starred in Adams's A Flowering Tree, will perform the soprano role on Friday. Michelle DeYoung and Jonathan Lemalu will appear in all three performances.

Ben Folds and Nick Hornby's Lonely Avenue is CD of the Week at Minnesota Public Radio's The Current. Folds will appear on A Different Spin with Blink 182's Mark Hoppus on Fuse tonight. On Friday, Folds, an accomplished photographer, will present some of his images in the series Music on ... Photography at the National Geographic Society's Washington, DC, headquarters. Season 2 of NBC's The Sing-Off gets under way on Monday, with Folds returning to judge the a cappella competition; he has begun blogging about it at nbc.com.

The Black Keys' and Carolina Chocolate Drops' latest releases—Brothers and Genuine Negro Jig, respectively—have made NPR's 50 Favorite Albums of 2010 and Paste's 50 Best Albums of 2010. "While Brothers marks a turning point for The Black Keys," NPR explains, "it also reaffirms the duo as an important fixture in contemporary blues-rock." NPR says of the Chocolate Drops: their "energy is so infectious, it's virtually impossible not to be drawn in."

Steve Reich's latest album, which pairs eighth blackbird's performance of the composer's Pulitzer Prize–winning piece Double Sextet with Bang on a Can's performance of 2x5, has now been named among the Top 10 Classical Albums of 2010 by NPR. "Steve Reich may be labeled a 'minimalist' composer," says NPR, "but the works on this recording are far more 'maximal' than simple repeating chords and mutating melodies."