Amadou & Mariam bring their North American tour to a close with a free performance on the Santa Monica Pier on Thursday, as part of the Twilight Concert Series. The show follows tour stops at festivals like Lollapalooza, Central Park SummerStage, Outside Lands, Edmonton Folk, and Osheaga, in addition to headlining shows at theaters and clubs. The Los Angeles Times, in a feature previewing Thursday's show, calls their new album, Folila, "the culmination of a midlife rise to the top strata of the world music scene in Africa, Europe and North America."

London-based singer Lianne La Havas has announced details for her first North American tour promoting her highly praised debut album, Is Your Love Big Enough?. She will join nine-time Grammy Award winner John Legend on 14 dates across the US, in addition to her previously announced September headline shows: September 11 at Bowery Ballroom in New York and September 13 at Le Belmont in Montreal. The New Yorker has described her live show as "stunning."

Pat Metheny, who celebrates a birthday on Sunday, closes out the current leg of his US tour with the Unity Band with shows in PA and NY ... Amadou & Mariam are at SF's Outside Lands ... Björk, The Black Keys, Billy Bragg play Nordic festivals ... Carolina Chocolate Drops play NYC's Cental Park SummerStage ... Shawn Colvin is in Denver with Loudon Wainwright III ... Dr. John, Emmylou Harris are at Edmonton Folk Festival ... Lianne La Havas plays UK's Wilderness Festival ... k.d. lang has two shows in NY state ... Jessica Lea Mayfield joins Langhorne Slim out West ... Punch Brothers close out Australia tour ... Sara Watkins joins Jackson Browne in Ohio and Kentucky ... and more ... 

The Black Keys, Neil Young with Crazy Horse, and Foo Fighters will headline The Global Poverty Project's Global Festival 2012, a multifaceted event culminating with a free ticketed concert on the Great Lawn of New York's Central Park on Saturday, September 29, 2012. Also performing are Band of Horses and K’Naan. The Festival celebrates achievements made towards eradicating extreme poverty. Tickets to the concert can be earned through the Global Citizen website.

The Black Keys continue their North American summer festival run at Lollapalooza in Chicago and Osheaga in Montreal, plus a show with The Shins in Toronto ... Amadou & Mariam play Lollapalooza and Osheaga too, plus NYC's Central Park for SummerStage ... Laurie Anderson is at Antony's Meltdown in London ... Björk, Emmylou Harris play Stockholm Music Fest ... Carolina Chocolate Drops treat New England to two free shows ... Jeremy Denk plays Aspen Music Fest ... Dr. John, Pat Metheny play Newport Jazz Fest ... Lianne La Havas is on Livestream ... k.d. lang, Jessica Lea Mayfield converge in Colorado ... Sara Watkins joins Jackson Browne for two nights at NYC's Beacon Theatre ... and more ...

After a European tour which included four Cultural Olympiad performances in the UK, Kronos Quartet has returned home to San Francisco and announced a new set of tour dates for the 2012–13 season. The group will perform across the US, Europe, and Australia, including the premiere of a new collaboration with Laurie Anderson, the conclusion of Kronos' multi-year partnership with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, a return to the UK for the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival curated by The National, and much more.

Billy Bragg will bring his Ain't Nobody That Can Sing Like Me tour to New Zealand and Australia this October in celebration of the life and legacy of Woody Guthrie, on the 100th anniversary of the folk legend’s birth. The first half of each show on the tour features songs from the Mermaid Avenue albums, in which Bragg and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy put Guthrie's words to music; the second half of the sets features songs from throughout Bragg's career. The New Zealand and Australia shows follow a similarly focused months-long tour of Europe and North America.

Ry Cooder will join a number of artists in celebrating the centenary of folk legend Woody Guthrie in This Land Is Your Land, a concert at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, on October 14. Cooder, whom Uncut has described as "a modern-day Woody Guthrie," has a new album, Election Special, out on August 21, and Uncut has named it Album of the Month. "In a recording career that stretches back more than four decades," says Uncut, "Cooder has never before made an album as immediate as Election Special." Mojo gives it four stars.

Sara Watkins performed at the 2012 Newport Folk Festival over the weekend, and NPR Music was there to capture the set. Watkins performed songs from her self-titled solo debut album and her latest album, Sun Midnight Sun, which NPR’s Stephen Thompson calls “a smart, surprising collection of sweetly hooky songs that rest within pop, country and folk on the Venn diagram of musical genres.” Listen to the set now at npr.org. Sara Watkins continues her tour as special guest of Jackson Browne with two shows at NYC's Beacon Theatre this weekend.

Amadou & Mariam launch their tour of North America with a performance at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, tonight. It's the couple's first such tour since 2009 and includes stops at festivals like Lollapalooza, Central Park SummerStage, Outside Lands, Edmonton Folk, and Osheaga, in addition to headlining shows at theaters and clubs. Amadou & Mariam will perform songs from their new album, Folila, which has been named among the Best Albums of 2012 So Far by Rolling Stone magazine and listeners of NPR.

Punch Brothers, following a month of US and European festival sets, have now announced that they will return to Europe this November, beginning with the previously announced show at Open House Festival in Belfast on November 5, followed by several headline stops in the UK including shows in Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, and London, as well as festival sets in the Netherlands and Belgium for Crossing Border Festival. Tickets are on sale now. Punch Brothers head to Australia next week.

Jessica Lea Mayfield launches a month-long summer tour, including a number of headline shows as well as a ten-day tour supporting Langhorne Slim. Mayfield kicks off the tour with a headlining show at Firebird in St. Louis tonight, followed by shows in Kansas City, Wichita, Denver, and Salt Lake City. The tour with Langhorne Slim begins at the Independent in San Francisco and the Troubador in LA next week and includes additional stops in California, Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, and Kentucky.