The Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed-curated Vivid LIVE festival continues at the Sydney Opera House, with performances from Anderson through the weekend. Nonesuch is counting down to the June 22 release of her album Homeland with the second in a five-video series featuring Fenway Bergamot, Anderson's male alter ego. In today's segment, "Pictures and Things," he talks about the cultural shift toward abstraction and what Nixon has to do with it.

Laurie Anderson's latest Nonesuch release, Homeland, is out now. In the month leading up to release day, Nonesuch released one short video clip featuring Anderson's male alter ego, Fenway Bergamot, every Tuesday. In the inaugural clip, Bergamot revisits the early days of the 2008 financial crisis. BAM has announced that Anderson will give the NY premiere of her new work, Delusion, at the Next Wave Festival this fall.

Last week saw the release of The Black Keys' new album, Brothers, and performances from the duo at various NYC venues, including opening for Pearl Jam at Madison Square Garden. This week, it's The Late Show with David Letterman on Tuesday and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal 's Speakeasy Blog says it "can’t get enough of the Black Keys." Consequences of Sound calls the new "Tighten Up" video "pretty much the greatest music video ever"; MTV's Buzzworthy Blog calls it "awesome."

Today's the day: Brothers, The Black Keys' highly anticipated new album, finally hits stores. To mark the occasion, The Black Keys pop-up store has launched at New York's Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, where the band will perform tomorrow night, May 19, with proceeds going to support Housing Works' advocate for New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. Today also marks the premiere of the official "Tighten Up" video.

The Low Anthem is taking a few weeks off from its busy touring schedule to prepare its next album. The good news is, a number of sites—LaundroMatinee, Baebel Music, Duke Street Blog, and The Bandwidth Sessions—have posted video sessions of live performances by the band to allow fans to experience the live feel before the band heads out on the road again in July.

Stephen Sondheim and the cast of A Little Night Music, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angela Lansbury, and Alexander Hanson, signed copies of the new cast album in New York City last week for more than 250 lucky fans upon the album's release. The day's events have been documented in a new video, now at nonesuch.com/media. The composer presented Lansbury with the Signature Theatre's Stephen Sondheim Award in DC on Monday.

After a pre-sale brought fans of The Black Keys early access to tickets for the band's summer tour and their forthcoming album, Brothers, tickets are now available direct from the venues, and the album is available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store. Fans who got in on early tickets were able to download "Tighten Up," the first single off of Brothers. Now everyone can catch the video for the song and its undeniably charismatic star.

David Byrne's Here Lies Love—a collaboration with Fatboy Slim and nearly two dozen vocalists—is out now. Earlier this year, Byrne spoke with CNN about his craft while at the TED Conference, in a just-published video. The Daily Telegraph gives Here Lies Love four stars, calling it "inspired ... a headily atmospheric and inspired combination of humid, late-Seventies, early-Eighties Latin-tilted beats and lyrics you actually want to think about."

Leave Your Sleep, Natalie Merchant's first new album in seven years and her Nonesuch debut, is out now. For the album, Merchant adapts the works of poets into a musically kaleidoscopic, two-disc set of new songs. It was featured on the BBC World Service program The Strand. Now, Merchant offers further insight into the project in a new 10-minute documentary, The Making of "Leave Your Sleep," available at nonesuch.com/media, where you'll also find a video retrospective celebrating Merchant's career.

"Please Don't," the first of six videos from the David Byrne / Fatboy Slim album Here Lies Love, is now on view at nonesuch.com/media. The track features vocals by Santigold, one of the many artists to contribute vocals to the album, which explores the life of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos and her rise to power. "Please Don't" documents Marcos's use of "handbag diplomacy" with world leaders to promote Philippine interests abroad.

The Low Anthem, having just completed its biggest-ever headline show last night in London, will soon be back in the States for two months of non-stop touring. Before the quartet left for Europe, it shot two on-the-go videos in New York City—the new song "Apothecary" in the grandeur of Grand Central and a haunting "This God Damn House" under twilight on Manhattan's Pier 66—for The Take-Away Shows series from La Blogotheque.

Natalie Merchant was in Ireland and Scotland last week to perform songs from her forthcoming Nonesuch debut, Leave Your Sleep. The Scotsman gives four stars to her Glasgow Celtic Connections performance, saying the set "gave full rein to the mercurial potency" of her voice. The Irish Times says that through her set at Whelan's in Dublin, she remained "the apple of everyone’s eye—and rightly so." Chronogram says the new album's "genius is in how Merchant pairs the poems with just the right accompaniment."