Carolina Chocolate Drops, who resume their tour at the Rhythm & Roots Festival in Rhode Island on September 1, are featured on Concrete Country, CMT's celebration of roots music. The band hit the streets of Nashville to perform three songs for the set, opening with a traditional tune, followed by "Country Girl," off their new album, Leaving Eden, and "Your Baby Ain't Sweet Like Mine," off their Grammy Award–winning Nonesuch debut album, Genuine Negro Jig. Watch all three performances here.

The music video for The Black Keys' "Tighten Up," off the band's multiple Grammy Award–winning 2010 album Brothers, has been given the Pop Up treatment from VH1's Pop Up Video. This version adds a new layer to the much-loved video directed by Chris Marrs Piliero, offering new insights and behind-the-scenes details on the making of the video. Check it out here.

Lianne La Havas, whose debut album, Is Your Love Big Enough?, was released in the US yesterday to great critical acclaim, recently visited the NYC studio of the Associated Press to perform the album tune "No Room for Doubt," sat down for a live performance and fan Q&A on Livestream; and stopped by Rivington Guitars to talk with The Warner Sound. Watch videos of all three events here. And listen to Is Your Love Big Enough? on AOL Music and MSN, where the album is streaming in full all week.

AfroCubism, the supergroup of Cuban and Malian singers and instrumentalists, made a rare tour of North America last month. CNN caught up with band member Toumani Diabaté to discuss the project in a piece for CNN's African Voices. "His collaborations and his vision," says CNN, "pairing the unique sound of the kora with instruments from across the globe, open up a world of possibility, all the while maintaining his roots at home in West Africa." Watch the full story, featuring clips from AfroCubism's performance at Bonnaroo, and an extended interview with Diabaté, here.

Punch Brothers launched the European leg of their summer tour at Denmark's Roskilde Festival on Friday. Their entire set was captured on video; watch it in full here. The band's European tour continues into next week and includes three more festival dates in the UK and headline shows in Paris and Dublin. And check out a photo gallery from Punch Brothers' recent show as Wilco's special guest at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

Carolina Chocolate Drops performed a new take of their song "Country Girl" for MTV Hive's Stop/Watch, in which artists are challenged to complete a song in 60 seconds. On this take, the band's "country shuffle has a sharper twang and a steel-soul," says MTV, "with singer Rhiannon Giddens showing new dimensions of her voice as she roars through the first verse of the original." Watch it here. Carolina Chocolate Drops are in for two days of music-making at the Winnipeg Folk Festival this weekend.

Punch Brothers have helped launch a new segment on MTV Hive called Stop/Watch, in which artists are challenged to complete a song in 60 seconds. In the inaugural session, Punch Brothers offer a new take on their song "New York City," a tune off their latest album, Who's Feeling Young Now?. “'Silky' isn’t a term often used to describe bluegrass yet it’s applicable for Punch Brothers‘ 60-second rendition of 'New York City,'” says MTV Hive, noting "Thile’s soulful vocals" and "the song’s jazzy elegance." Watch it here.

Shawn Colvin is the subject of a feature profile on PBS NewsHour. She spoke with the show's Art Beat correspondent Jeffrey Brown, sharing some stories from her new memoir, Diamond in the Rough, and offers solo acoustic performances of two songs off her new album, All Fall Down: the title track and "Change Is on the Way," which she co-wrote with Patty Griffin. Watch the interview and performances here.

Pianist Jeremy Denk recently invited NPR into his NYC apartment as he prepared his "piano boot camp" to practice the Ligeti Piano Etudes featured on his new album, Ligeti/Beethoven, for a video posted last week. Now come the performances themselves: three etudes from Book 1—"Fanfares," "Arc-en-ciel," and "Automne à Varsovie." Watch them here.

Carolina Chocolate Drops' tour brought the band to the Mystic Theater in Petaluma, California, this spring. While there, the band sat down backstage with PBS's Sound Tracks: Quick Hits to discuss their new album, Leaving Eden, the history of the band, and the music they champion. Band mates Dom Flemons and Rhiannon Giddens gave an exclusive backstage performance. Watch both videos plus two songs from the stage here. Says Quick Hits: "It's hard to imagine a quartet being more in sync than the Drops are during this virtuoso, rowdy romp."

Pianist Jeremy Denk invited NPR into his NYC apartment as he sat down to practice the Ligeti Piano Etudes featured on his new album, Ligeti/Beethoven. Watch the resulting video here. NPR Music recently named Ligeti/Beethoven one of its 25 Favorite Albums of 2012 (So Far), saying Denk's "technical prowess, insight, wit and ardor have resulted in an album that people are going to be talking about for years to come."

Ry Cooder joined TIME's Joe Klein on the columnist's road trip across the US. Klein is crossing the country, talking to Americans about the state of the nation as the fall election season approaches. It's something to which Cooder is particularly attuned, given the subject of his new album, Election Special, out August 21. "Ry Cooder has provided much of the sound track of my life," writes Klein. "He’s been writing political songs in recent years, and unlike most in that often-too-obvious genre, each is musically exquisite." Watch a video of the pair meeting up with fiddler Dan Gellert in Dayton, Ohio, here.