Hurray for the Riff Raff, just before the one-year anniversary of their acclaimed album The Past Is Still Alive, has shared their first new single and music video of 2025, “Pyramid Scheme.” The song embodies that record’s spirit of resilience and rebellion, with lyrical nods to Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane, Darby Crash, and Frida Kahlo. You can watch the video, animated by Jayla Kai Smith, here. Hurray for the Riff Raff has also announced dozens of spring/summer US tour dates.

Composer/performer David Longstreth, whose new album with his band Dirty Projectors and the chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e, Song of the Earth, is out April 4, stopped by for the Nonesuch Selects video series, in which artists visit the Nonesuch office, pick some of their favorite albums from the music library, and share a few words on their choices. He chose recordings by David Byrne, Jonny Greenwood, Bulgarian State Television Female Choir, Caetano Veloso, Tyondai Braxton, Scritti Politti, and João Gilberto, and from the Nonesuch Explorer Series.

Guitarist/composer Yasmin Williams stopped by the NPR offices in Washington, DC, to perform a Tiny Desk Concert of songs from her new album, Acadia, and more. "Williams is a fingerstyle guitarist who taps, slaps and slides up and down the fretboard of her instrument with a commanding sense of scenery that flickers between the strings," says NPR's Lars Gotrich. "Storytellers build worlds; at the Tiny Desk, Williams invites us into hers." You can watch it here.

Rhiannon Giddens reunites with her former Carolina Chocolate Drops bandmate Justin Robinson on What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow, due April 18. Produced by Giddens and Joseph "joebass" DeJarnette, the album features Giddens on banjo and Robinson on fiddle, playing eighteen of their favorite North Carolina tunes. Many were learned from their late mentor, legendary North Carolina Piedmont musician Joe Thompson; one is from another musical hero, the late Etta Baker. Giddens and Robinson recorded outdoors at Thompson’s and Baker’s North Carolina homes, as well as the former plantation Mill Prong House, accompanied by the sounds of nature, including two different broods of cicadas, which had not emerged simultaneously since 1803, creating a true once-in-a-lifetime soundscape. A video of “Hook and Line,” a traditional tune from Joe Thompson’s repertoire and filmed at his home in Mebane, NC, may be seen here. The duo, along with four other string musicians, embarks on Rhiannon Giddens & The Old-Time Revue Tour April 25.

Composer/guitarist Yasmin Williams performed "Nectar," from her new album, Acadia, for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert's Late Show Me Music online performance video series. You can watch it here. Williams kicks off a US tour in Ann Arbor this Friday.

Hurray for the Riff Raff, aka Alynda Segarra, was on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! to perform "Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive)," from their 2024 album, The Past Is Still Alive. You can watch it here.

Portuguese fado singer Carminho stopped by the NPR offices in Washington, DC, to perform a Tiny Desk Concert of songs from her albums Portuguesa and Maria and her EP Carmimho at Electrical Audio. "The world of Portuguese fado is full of emotion that is on display within seconds of this performance by vocalist Carminho," says NPR's Felix Contreras. You can watch it here.

Composer/trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, whose new album, honey from a winter stone, is out next week, stopped by for the Nonesuch Selects video series, in which artists visit the Nonesuch office, pick some of their favorite albums from the music library, and share a few words on their choices. He chose recordings by Joni Mitchell, Paul Jacobs (performing Schoenberg), Jonny Greenwood, Mary Halvorson, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Steve Reich, and Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade.

Yasmin Williams stopped by Acoustic Guitar to perform songs from her new album, Acadia, and more and to discuss the album. You can watch the session here. "Yasmin Williams is known for extending the boundaries of solo fingerstyle guitar, with progressive techniques and original compositions that blossom out of traditional folk and roots touchstones," writes Acoustic Guitar's Joey Lusterman. "On her latest record, Acadia, she expands her distinctive sound world even further." Williams kicks off a US tour later this month.

David Longstreth’s Song of the Earth, a song cycle for orchestra and voices, is due April 4. Performed by Longstreth with his band Dirty Projectors—Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman, Olga Bell—and the Berlin-based chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e, conducted by André de Ridder, the album also features Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Steve Lacy, Patrick Shiroishi, Anastasia Coope, Tim Bernardes, Ayoni, Portraits of Tracy, and the author David Wallace-Wells. Longstreth says that while Song of the Earth—his biggest-yet foray into the field of concert music—"is not a ‘climate change opera,’” he wanted to “find something beyond sadness: beauty spiked with damage. Acknowledgement flecked with hope, irony, humor, rage.”

Composer Steve Reich talks about creating his 1970–71 piece Drumming—which the Village Voice hailed as “the most important work of the whole minimalist music movement"—in a new video from his publisher Boosey & Hawkes. Steve Reich and Musicians gave the world premiere performance of Drumming at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC in December 1971. Their 1987 Nonesuch recording is included in the forthcoming Steve Reich Collected Works, a twenty-seven disc box set, due March 14.

We've cracked open a copy of the upcoming nine-LP, four-CD deluxe edition of Wilco's A Ghost Is Born, due February 7, in a new unboxing video. Take a look inside here.