The critical response on Randy Newman's latest release, Harps and Angels, has already started pouring in from both sides of the Atlantic. The Times (UK) gives the album five stars, concluding: "The man's a master." The Los Angeles Times has a feature profile of Randy, whom it says "has plumbed the depths and shallows of the American psyche with greater consistency than perhaps any of his contemporaries." Also, Huffington Post contributor David Wild proclaims as the Greatest Song of All Time Randy's much-covered tune "I Think It's Going to Rain Today," calling Newman's 2003 version "probably the most powerful and shaded piece of music I could ever imagine," and adding that Harps and Angels "is one of the best ever albums from the modern musical master who gave us all the greatest song of all-time."

On Friday, Nonesuch.com featured a video of Randy performing "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country," from his latest release, Harps and Angels, out this week. To mark the album's release, all this week we'll be adding new videos of interviews with Randy in which he talks about that and other songs on the album, as well as more videos of Randy at the piano performing some of those songs. Today at nonesuch.com/media, you'll find a video of Randy discussing and playing "Potholes," which he calls "the most absolutely honest song I've ever written."

The Black Keys played the opening day of Lollapalooza in Chicago on Friday in a set that Time Out Chicago reports featured the band's signature "folky-blues, [which] breaks into blown-out acid riffage." Metromix Chicago says that hometown band Wilco's Saturday set showed that the city "has a lot to thank Wilco for." Over the next two weeks, each band will make its way to Brooklyn's popular McCarren Park Pool, which, as the New York Times reports, will transition back to its original use after this summer's shows.

Ry Cooder recently spoke with Studio 360 host Kurt Anderson about his latest Nonesuch release, I, Flathead, the third in his California trilogy of records, as well as the many facets of his rich career. Cooder tells Anderson of, among other things, his earliest professional gigs in his hometown of Los Angeles while still in high school in the 1960s. "My fate was sealed, so to speak," he says, "because I had participated in this most miraculous thing I had ever seen ... that being a record studio."

Here is our weekly list of just some of the many events going on across the globe this weekend featuring Nonesuch artists ...

The Los Angeles Times called "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country" "so funny it hurt," and Rolling Stone named it among the Best Singles of 2007. It's now featured on Harps and Angels, Randy's latest Nonesuch release. You can watch a video performance of the song from last year on the Nonesuch Media page, and check back next week for all-new video features celebrating the release of the new album.

Randy Newman's forthcoming Nonesuch release, Harps and Angels, earns four stars from both The Times (UK), which names it Album of the Week, and The Sun, which says: "This is the real Newman—dark, cynical, and very funny." The paper calls it "a winning mix" of musical styles that's "been worth the wait." The Guardian calls Randy "a true master of popular song."

With Harps and Angels, Randy Newman's first album of new music in nearly a decade, due out next week (August 4 in the UK, the following day in the US), Randy will be the featured guest on two British television shows in the coming days: tonight at 11:10 PM GMT on ITV1's Soundtrack to My Life with host Cat Deeley and Sunday at 10:30 AM on Sky News's Sunday Live with Adam Boulton.

Kronos Quartet Artistic Administrator Sidney Chen recently spoke with the Future of Music Coalition for a podcast, in which he discusses the role the internet has played in the life of Kronos. From allowing for greater connectivity with existing fans and accessing new audiences via social networks and blogs, to opening the Quartet to new sounds and even new collaborations, the freedom and openness of the internet has had a significant impact on the group. "Having an open internet has provided inspiration to Kronos," says Chen. "We don't hear the world in a boundaried way, and the internet has allowed us to remove a lot of those boundaries."

When Punch Brothers played the Ravinia Festival outside Chicago last week, it was something of a coming home for the band's banjo player, Noam Pikelny, a native son of the city. Chicago Tonight, from public television station WTTW, profiles Noam and the band whose Nonesuch debut, Punch, "takes bluegrass where it has never gone before."

In her review of Sam Phillips's latest Nonesuch release, Don’t Do Anything, USA Today's Elysa Gardner writes of Sam that her "wonderfully fuzzy vocals and wry, lyrical songwriting are two of the world’s underappreciated wonders." Gardner says that the "gorgeously quirky sensibility" of Sam's previous releases, is matched on the new record, which also features songs with "a dusky beauty that’s distinctly their own."

"In the years since TONY adopted its rating system," writes Time Out New York (TONY) music critic Jay Ruttenberg, "I had resisted granting an album six stars, the magazine’s unconventional 'it goes to 11' grade. Now, I relent: Randy Newman’s Harps and Angels ... confirms his place among our best living songwriters ... It's an outstanding album ..." Rolling Stone says, "Harps and Angels is reason to wrap yourself in the flag and cheer."