Natalie Merchant's US summer tour is still a month away, but a select few will enjoy a performance of songs from her recent album, Leave Your Sleep, this weekend, as she performs at the West Chester Poetry Conference. The Philadelphia Inquirer calls the album "an ambitious work that embraces fun, story, and sadness." Conference co-founder Dana Gioa calls it "unprecedented" and tells the Inquirer: "She's the Franz Schubert of folk-rock."

Radiohead drummer Philip Selway will release his first solo album, Familial, August 31 on Nonesuch Records. The album will be available for pre-order late June. A collection of fragile, haunting, and heartfelt songs, Familial is likely to surprise many—and not solely because these understated performances are coming from a drummer; it makes the case for Selway as a natural born singer-songwriter.

Ry Cooder will appear on New York public radio station WFUV, 90.7 FM, on Thursday to premiere his latest effort, "Quicksand," a new song he wrote in response to Arizona's recent immigration law, SB 1070. The track will be available exclusively on iTunes beginning June 29, with all proceeds going to support MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund.

The BBC World Service arts program The Strand headed to New Orleans for a look at how the city's arts community had been recovering in the five years since Hurricane Katrina struck and in light of the current BP oil disaster. The show features New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint, whose album The Bright Mississippi showcases the work of New Orleans jazz greats. "The spirit here is alive and well," he says.

Laurie Anderson's forthcoming Nonesuch album, Homeland is due out on June 22. You can listen to it in its entirety now through release day as an NPR First Listen. "Anderson's performance pieces can be mind-altering; when they work, they can change the way you see the everyday," says NPR's Bob Boilen. "It's not an everyday record, but Homeland does draw on the everyday, in new and inventive ways."

Following the June 22 release of her new album, Homeland, Laurie Anderson will bring an intimate live show, Another Day in America: Songs from the Album "Homeland" and Other Stories, to New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, Philadelphia’s World Café Live, and Alexandria, Virginia's The Birchmere, in addition to performing on The Late Show with David Letterman. You can watch "Victory," an installment in the weekly series of videos featuring her male alter ego, Fenway Bergamot, here at Nonesuch.com.

The Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed-curated festival Vivid LIVE at the Sydney Opera House culminated this weekend with a number of events, including one that captured the hearts of Sydney's canine community and the attention of news media across the globe: Music for Dogs, a 20-minute piece Anderson wrote and performed for an audience of purebreds and mutts alike. Anderson called it "a highlight of my life."

Stephin Merritt is in Seattle this week for screenings of two projects at the Seattle International Film Festival: Strange Powers, the new documentary about him and The Magnetic Fields, which Seattle radio station KEXP calls "exquisite," and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the classic film for which he has written and will perform a new score.

Kronos Quartet is in Taiwan for the Traditional Arts Festival ... Laurie Anderson plays the Sydney Opera House for Vivid LIVE ... The Black Keys continue tour in Kansas City and Wakarusa ... Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica tour Russia ... Brad Mehldau solos in the UK ... Pat Metheny takes Orchestrion to Seoul ... Allen Toussaint, Don Byron play The Bright Mississippi in Vermont ... Sara Watkins guests on A Prairie Home Companion ... and more ...

Laurie Anderson's performances at Vivid LIVE, the festival she and her husband, Lou Reed, have curated in Sydney, Australia, continue through the weekend, including the multi-artist Slow Music Night, the canine-friendly Music for Dogs, and Day for Night Movies, a marathon screening set to live scores. Pink Paper gives four stars to Anderson's forthcoming album, Homeland, full of "beguiling, beautiful and mysterious listens" and "spine-chilling moments."

The Black Keys began their months-long tour last night at The Depot in Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that "dirty grooves were unleashed all night" and says the band's new album, Brothers, "has added more swagger—in other words, rock 'n' roll—to the duo's foundation of bluesy, R&B-influenced soul explorations, and the band is all the better for it." The Boston Phoenix says the duo is "making quintessentially American music."

The Carolina Chocolate Drops are featured on the latest episode of PRI's Studio 360 with Kurt Anderson. The show caught up with the trio when they "returned as stars" to the site of their first meeting, the Black Banjo Gathering, and delves into the history of that gathering's focal instrument, the banjo. The band performs two sets at the Bonnaroo festival next week.