Lake Street Dive has released a short video trailer for their forthcoming album, Side Pony, featuring music from the album's title track and a quick look inside the recording studio. The video was made by Matthew Beighley using Greg Liszt's footage from the album recording sessions at the Sound Emporium in Nashville with producer Dave Cobb. You can watch it here. Side Pony, Lake Street Dive's Nonesuch debut album, is due February 19 and is available to pre-order now.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman close out tour with SFJAZZ Center run … Sam Amidon stops in Nashville … Laurie Anderson talks Heart of a Dog in Santa Fe … Timo Andres joins Attaca Quartet in NYC … The Arcs play Boston … Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell give an intimate benefit show in DC … Mark Morris Dance Group performs The Hard Nut at BAM in Brooklyn … Audra McDonald is in Barbados … Natalie Merchant talks Paradise Is There in Chicago … Punch Brothers play the Northeast … and more …

The new six-song recording by The Arcs, entitled The Arcs vs. The Inventors Vol. I, featuring Dr. John and David Hidalgo, which was first released as a limited-edition vinyl 10" as part of Record Store Day's Black Friday event, is now available digitally; a limited quantity of the 10" vinyl is also now available in the Nonesuch Store. The disc is the first in a series of collaborative "Inventors" recordings to be released by The Arcs. The band is currently touring the US with music from Yours, Dreamily, its debut album.

Rhiannon Giddens's new five-song EP Factory Girl, which was first released as a vinyl 10" as part of the Black Friday Record Store Day event, is now available digitally; a limited quantity of the 10" vinyl is also now available in the Nonesuch Store. NPR Music's Ann Powers says: "Deftly curated, gorgeously sung, this EP is America." The EP is culled from the same T Bone Burnett–produced sessions that yielded her solo debut album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, which has been nominated for a Grammy Award and has landed on several lists of the year's best, including those from NPR Music, Rolling Stone, Sunday Times, Uncut, and Mojo. 

Rhiannon Giddens, Emmylou Harris, and Rodney Crowell have made the Los Angeles Times music critic Randy Lewis's list of the Ten Best Albums of 2015. Giddens's Tomorrow Is My Turn is "a tour de force," he writes. "She can sing anything from Southern blues to Celtic folk and French cabaret with equal aplomb, and is shaping up as a first-rate songwriter as well." Harris and Crowell's The Traveling Kind is "a gorgeous reflection on life, hard-won wisdom and celebration from two longtime friends and musical collaborators," says Lewis.

Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog has been named one of the Best Movies of 2015 by the New York Times' A.O. Scott, landing at No. 4 on his list. "A meditation on love, loss and the meaning of life," Scott writes. "[A]nyone who ever had a heart is likely to succumb to Ms. Anderson’s ethereal wisdom and her fierce formal wit." Anderson will take part in Q&As at screenings of Heart of a Dog at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe this weekend.

Robert Plant has contributed an exclusive track to The Long Road, an EP intended to raise money for the British Red Cross in their attempts to provide support to refugees in the UK. He recorded a version of UK band Elbow's track "The Blanket of Night," which tells the tale of refugees attempting a treacherous journey to attain asylum in the UK. "We have a worldwide international catastrophe," says Plant. "Talking about it is one thing, doing something about it is another. The position we are in, it's paramount we all do our best one way or another to help." The EP, due March 4, 2016, is available to pre-order now. All profits go to the British Red Cross.

Lianne La Havas, whose new album, Blood, has just been nominated for a Grammy Award, will return to the US for a series of intimate solo club dates starting at The McKittrick Hotel in New York City on Monday, February 1, 2016, followed by stops in Boston, DC, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Oakland, culminating with a show at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles on February 11. Tickets go on sale this Friday, December 11.

Congratulations to all of the Nonesuch Records artists who were nominated for the 58th Annual Grammy Awards, announced earlier today by The Recording Academy: Rhiannon Giddens, Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell, Lianne La Havas, Punch Brothers, and Joshua Redman. Together, these artists' Nonesuch releases have garnered a total of eight nominations this year. The 58th Annual Grammy Awards will be held on Monday, February 15, 2016, in Los Angeles and will be broadcast live on CBS.

Rhiannon Giddens's solo debut album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, has made NPR Music's list of its 50 Favorite Albums of 2015. "The joy inherent in the [album] isn't just her impeccable taste in cover material," writes NPR's Katie Presley. "It's also the palpable delight Giddens takes in covering it ... Tomorrow Is My Turn runs on an engine of irrepressible enthusiasm and a degree of sheer talent that, when encountered at full strength, is, fittingly, downright giddy-making." It's also on the Sunday Times of London's list of the 100 Best Records of the Year. "Singer of the year, the leader of the Carolina Chocolate Drops turns in a tour de force on her solo debut," writes the Times' Clive Davis. 

Congolese seven-piece band Mbongwana Star's debut full-length album, From Kinshasa, a World Circuit release, has landed on year's best lists from the New York Times, NPR Music, SPIN, Mojo, Uncut, and Q. The album's "ambition extends to the astral plane, absorbing post-punk, funk and techno along the way," says NPR. "The journey feels nothing short of a new world order. Don't hesitate to hitch your wagon to Mbongwana Star." SPIN says: "Let's celebrate how this indescribable seven-piece resists pigeonholing from even the most burnt Burning Man guest as anything but the future."

The Arcs take their inaugural North American tour to Columbus and Detroit … Sam Amidon tours North America with San Fermin … The Bad Plus Joshua Redman goes west … Tyondai Braxton plays solo shows in Brazil … Emmylou Harris celebrates a Wainwright Noël in Montréal … Brad Mehldau Trio wraps up its tour in Italy … Punch Brothers hit the road for a two-week US tour … and more …