Carolina Chocolate Drops and Punch Brothers are in the UK this week, set to share a bill at Celtic Connections in Glasgow on Friday. Before then, Punch Brothers have been performing with Amos Lee and headline their own show at Bush Hall in London. Carolina Chocolate Drops have been making the rounds at the BBC, performing songs from their forthcoming album, Leaving Eden, on BBC Radio 3's In Tune and talking with Radio 4's Front Row about reclaiming the black string-band tradition.

Listeners of New Sounds, from New York NPR member station WNYC, have chosen their picks for the Top Ten best new releases of 2011, and topping the list is Donnacha Dennehy's Nonesuch Records debut album, Grá agus Bás. On the list at No. 3 is Steve Reich's latest, WTC 9/11. Both albums had previously made NPR Music's best-of-the-year lists. New Sounds host John Schaefer also includes Dennehy's Grá agus Bás on his list of the year's best.

The NPR Music listeners have spoken, choosing their 100 favorite albums of 2011. "The Black Keys swooped into the No. 6 slot with El Camino," says NPR, "an album just a few days older than the poll itself." "I was pretty thrilled by this list," says NPR's Bob Boilen in the All Songs Considered countdown of the Top 25. Also among the Top 100 listener favorites are Björk's Biophilia and Emmylou Harris's Hard Bargain. Björk's "Virus" is among the NPR Music staff's favorite songs of the year, as is James Farm's "Polliwog."

The Black Keys, whose new album, El Camino, is just one day away, were featured on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, talking with host Audie Cornish about the new album. The Black Keys were musical guests on Saturday Night Live this weekend, performing two songs off of El Camino: "Lonely Boy" and "Gold on the Ceiling." Watch the performances here. The Evening Standard gives the album four stars, calling it “fiery, raucous and ferocious fun.” "The Black Keys have grown into one of the most exciting rock bands of our time," exclaims the Independent on Sunday. "Too late for those album of the year polls?"

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 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."

Ry Cooder's new song about the Occupy Wall Street movement, "Wall Street Part of Town," was recorded last Tuesday and premiered on Pacifica Radio's Jon Wiener show on Wednesday, a fundraiser for the Pacifica Radio Archives' Campus Campaign National Education Project. It also aired on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. You can now listen to the song here, download it for free, then help spread the good word. Cooder's latest album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, was inspired by the inequities that spared the few from the financial crisis while most were left to fend for themselves.

Composer/pianist Timothy Andres was featured on Q2 Music's Nadia Sirota show today titled "Timothy Andres: Bringing the Virtuoso Composer-Performer Tradition Into the 21st Century." Q2 is celebrating WQXR's "Beethoven Awareness Month" in its own fittingly contemporary way, looking at "modern-day Beethovens ... some of today's most distinct and inventive compositional voices." Today's show includes four pieces from Andres's 2010 Nonesuch debut album, Shy and Mighty, each introduced by the composer.

The Black Keys are featured on the latest edition of NPR's All Songs Considered, the show's last regular episode of the year. "Run Right Back," off the band's forthcoming album, El Camino, due out December 6, kicks off the show. All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen calls it "wonderful" and says of the band: "They're the pillars. You just know they're gonna put out really solid rock." Derrick Tuggle, the star of the video for the album's first single, "Lonely Boy," stopped by the Ellen show yesterday. Watch the segment here.

The Black Keys' new album, El Camino, is due out in less than four weeks. If you've seen the video for "Lonely Boy," you've gotten a taste of what's to come. Now comes a first listen of another album track, "Run Right Back," which premiered on BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe show. Listen online at bbc.co.uk. Both songs are on the limited-edition vinyl 12-inch available at participating indie music retailers on Record Store Day's "Back to Black" Friday, November 25.

Joe Henry, the singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer, talks with NPR's Fresh Air about his new album and about the 2009 album he produced for Allen Toussaint, The Bright Mississippi, on which, for the first time, Toussaint explores the work of his New Orleans forebears, like Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Jelly Roll Morton. Henry also produced the Carolina Chocolate Drops' 2010 Nonesuch debut album, Genuine Negro Jig. He will perform with Brad Mehldau at London's Wigmore Hall next month.

Ry Cooder was featured on AirTalk from Southern California public radio station KPCC this morning. He spoke with host Larry Mantle about his music, his new album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, and his new book, Los Angeles Stories. "With a musician’s ear for language," says the show of the book, "Cooder’s stories and the characters who people them—drifters, trolley drivers, disc jockeys, salesmen, jazz musicians and of course, cops and robbers—take us on a journey into a Los Angeles that has long gone the way of Chavéz Ravine and the red cars."