Youssou N'Dour was in London this week to perform with his Super Etoile band at Indig02, and The Independent gives the show four stars. The paper sees Youssou's latest Nonesuch release, Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take), as "the weave of percussion, bass lines and quicksilver guitars with N'Dour's extraordinary voice that stands out. His singing is a rhythmic device as much as an emotional force."

Mandy Patinkin returns to Broadway, the site of his Tony Award-winning musical debut in Evita, his starring role in the original production of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, and countless other performances, on May 19 for a one-night-only event to benefit the off-Broadway Classic Stage Company. He will be accompanied by his longtime pianist, Paul Ford, in this special solo performance at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.

The Black Keys rocked The Wiltern in Los Angeles last night, celebrating the release of their new album, Attack & Release, with a couple thousand fans. The Associated Press album review struggles to single out one song to recommend above the rest: "There are so many delightful songs here, it's hard to pick one. Let's go with 'Psychotic Girl,' a song so unlike anything the Keys have done it's startling ... a melange of familiar sounds spun into a new flavor of cotton candy we've never tasted before."

Bill Frisell and Glenn Kotche will be on hand in Cincinnati, Ohio, this week as the third annual MusicNOW festival, organized by native son Bryce Dessner of The National, gets under way at Memorial Hall tonight. Kotche performed in the inaugural MusicNOW in 2006 and returns this Friday to perform with Dessner and Bang on a Can on a double bill with Dirty Projectors. Frisell makes his MusicNOW debut tomorrow night.

Looking forward to tonight's Punch Brothers performance at The Ark in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Detroit Free Press calls the band's Nonesuch debut, Punch, "one of the best records so far this year, an elegantly sculpted work that doesn't let its high-end chops overshadow its heart."

The Bravo! Canada network's award-winning series Live at the Rehearsal Hall will feature k.d. lang and her band in concert performing songs from Watershed and favorites from throughout her career. The show will debut tomorrow night, April 1. Past episodes of the series have featured a broad array of artists, including Beck, Feist, Rufus Wainwright, and Philip Glass. 

This week, k.d. lang brought her Watershed tour to the West Coast, starting with two sold-out performances in Seattle. The Post-Intelligencer points to "the secret chord" referenced in Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," to explain: "That's just what fellow Canadian k.d. lang seems to have found ... Watershed, her aptly named new CD, finds lang achieving an effortless-sounding blend of the personal and the artistic, while adding Brazilian accents to her resolute torch and twang."

The Black Keys are in London to play a special show tonight at Wilton's Music Hall, an intimate, 300-seat theater, featuring music from their forthcoming Nonesuch record, Attack & Release, and helping to relaunch the monthly MOJO Club series, presented by MOJO magazine. "We love playing England," the Keys' Dan Auerbach told the magazine. "We have a few interesting ideas in terms of what we can do as a two-piece this time around, and we can't wait to get out there and see if they work."

Fresh from Austin's South by Southwest festival, The Black Keys are gearing up for a full-fledged US tour for their forthcoming record, Attack & Release, due out April 1. The new album, produced by Brian Burton (Danger Mouse), earns a perfect five-star review in the Guardian, which exclaims: "Attack & Release isn't just the best Black Keys album thus far. It's the best authentic trad-rock album in years."

The tour continues for k.d. lang with two stops on the East Coast this weekend before heading west for two nights in Seattle. The Seattle Times says her new album, Watershed, "feels both reverent and fresh." A culmination of the many styles of music k.d. has incorporated into her repertoire over the years, Watershed also features k.d.'s famous voice, here "delicately restrained, smoky and intimate," says the Times. "The result is faintly nostalgic, incredibly lovely and seemingly effortless." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer calls Watershed "a dreamy, laid-back exploration of romance and passion."

The Magnetic Fields are gearing up for the last two stops of their Distortion tour, with shows at Seattle's Town Hall set for Thursday and Friday and a six-show residency over three nights at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music the following weekend. In the review of Sunday's show in LA, the Los Angeles Times sees Distortion as a "delightful anomaly in the Magnetic Fields' catalog" for all its distorted fuzziness. At the same time, he says, the "tidy chamber-folk" arrangements the band performs in concert allow the audience "to admire Merritt's watertight song craft."