Emmylou Harris and Jessica Lea Mayfield are among the artists who will be showcased on the PBS special ACL Presents: Americana Music Festival, along with Robert Plant, Gregg Allman, Alison Krauss, The Avett Brothers, and others, airing on Austin City Limits this Saturday. The hour-long special was filmed live at the Ryman Auditorium on October 13, during the sold-out Americana Music Association's Honors and Award Show. Catch a sneak peek of Mayfield's performance here.

Randy Newman, whose new live performance CD+DVD Live in London is out now, made his Austin City Limits TV debut this past weekend with an hour-long episode on PBS. You can watch the first 20 minutes of the episode here and the complete show at video.pbs.org, available until December 10. The Independent and the Daily Mail give Live in London four stars; the Sunday Times calls it "essential listening for anyone who cares about the art of songwriting."

Randy Newman, whose new live performance CD+DVD Live in London was released this week, is set to make his Austin City Limits television debut when the show presents an episode dedicated exclusively to his work this Saturday, November 12, on PBS stations across the US. The set list features 17 songs from throughout Newman's career, including "Short People," "Political Science," and "You Can Leave Your Hat On." Read the complete set list and watch Newman's ACL performance of "You've Got a Friend in Me" here.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops are featured on the new documentary Give Me the Banjo, which premiered on PBS on Friday night and is now available online. Narrated by Steve Martin, Give Me the Banjo is a musical odyssey through 300 years of American history and culture by way of the banjo. Watch Carolina Chocolate Drops member Rhiannon Giddens perform a song from the film here. On a very different note, the band has launched a cookie recipe contest with proceeds from sales of the winning cookies donated to the Food Bank of North Carolina.

Björk has unveiled the video for "Thunderbolt," off her new album, Biophilia. The video, which was shot at the world premiere of the live Biophilia show at the Manchester International Festival this summer, debuted on Boing Boing yesterday. Watch it here. Björk was awarded the Digital Genius Award at MTV's O Music Awards on Monday. People calls the Biophilia album "a sonic wonder." Blurt calls it "softly epic ... a delicate and highly tactile treat, a unique gem of innovation."

Perhaps you've heard The Black Keys' new single, "Lonely Boy," off their forthcoming album, El Camino? Perhaps you'd like to hear it again? Why not? Listen again here. Rolling Stone, which gives the song four stars, calls it "a swift, sturdy hunk of all-American cool.” Stereogum says it's “a fired-up rager with a surf-inflected central riff and a jumpy, restless organ … It’s a seriously catchy, energetic song.” VH1 says it's "as raw and infectious as anything the Black Keys have ever produced, possessing that rare, uncanny quality that crawls under your skin, breathing life into otherwise inert parts of your body, making you move in ways that are both spectacular and completely organic."

As you may have heard, The Black Keys’ new album El Camino will be released December 6 on Nonesuch Records. But no need to wait till then to hear some brand new music off the album. You can listen to “Lonely Boy,” the first single off of El Camino, today! Get a first listen of "Lonely Boy" in the video here. And be sure to pre-order the album from the Nonesuch Store now to get an instant download of the song.

Malian duo Amadou & Mariam are featured in the first installment of a video interview series from difrent.org, a new website dedicated to promoting music and culture as a means for social change. They talk with the site's founder, musician/activist Stephan Said, about the roots of social change in Malian music and how the universal language of music can break down barriers all over the world. "We have always sung for social change," says Amadou. Watch the interview here.

Laurie Anderson's new exhibition, Forty-Nine Days in the Bardo, made its debut at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia last month. The exhibition, which runs through November 19, uses the structure of a diary and The Tibetan Book of the Dead to explore the themes of love and death, the many levels of dreaming, and illusion. Anderson gave a talk at the museum titled "Animal Stories," an excerpt of which you can watch here, along with a video in which she walks viewers through the exhibition.

Steve Reich was featured on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. In honor of the composer's 75th birthday, the program examines the work and impact of "arguably the most influential composer of his generation," whose music has "inspired generations of composers whose work can be heard in concert halls, dance clubs, and rock festivals." The composer joined the London Symphony Orchestra in concert at Barbican Hall, to which the Daily Telegraph gives a perfect five stars. Cité de la Musique in Paris continued its Reich birthday festival, Pulsations, with a performance of choreographer Karine Saporta's Notes, now available to watch online.

Björk's new album, Biophilia, is due out on CD next week. Also available then is the complete Biophilia App suite comprising ten components, one for each track on the album; watch a preview video here. The vinyl album will now release two weeks later, on October 24. The Guardian gives the album four stars, saying it "teems with invention ... big on moments of pure, indulgent pleasure." Daily Express says she's "outdone even herself" with Biophilia. "Eccentric and quite lovely, this is a real artist at work."

With the Carolina Chocolate Drops taking a couple weeks away from the road, what better time to revisit the group's performance at the Newport Folk Festival this summer? While at Newport's Fort Adams State Park for the festival, proving to be among the "Newport favorites" of NPR's Ann Powers, the band took some time to perform three songs for Paste magazine. All three are now available in the latest issue of Paste's multimedia online mPlayer.