Lake Street Dive kicked off an extensive tour in support of their Nonesuch debut, Side Pony, this week and continue out west through the weekend, playing The Wiltern in Los Angeles tonight, The Masonic in San Francisco tomorrow, and the Cargo Concert Hall in Reno on Sunday. The tour heads to the Pacific Northwest next week. Side Pony was released to critical acclaim last week. "A band steeped in Motown Soul, Beatles melodies, and pop divas from Dusty Springfield to Adele," says Rolling Stone, "the retro vibe rules, vividly captured by producer Dave Cobb … pretty irresistible."

The band marked release week with a performance on Conan last night, a new video for “Call Off Your Dogs” filmed at Electric Lady Studios, and radio stops on NPR's World Café and WFUV in New York City, where Side Pony was named the station’s New Dig of the week and dubbed “Lake Street Dive’s most accomplished studio recording.”

---

Sam Amidon performs at Royce Hall in Los Angeles, opening for jazz violinist Regina Carter tonight.

A video of Amidon’s four-song set for KEXP from last year’s Pickathon festival was released earlier this week. You can watch the complete four-song set with "Down the Line" and "Your Lone Journey," both off of Amidon’s 2014 album Lily-O, as well as two earlier songs, "Another Man Done Gone" and "I See the Sign," here.

---

Tyondai Braxton performs a solo set at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) inside Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on Saturday. He shares a double bill with fellow electronic musician Daniel Wohl as part of Callings Out of Context, a live music series co-presented by The Broad contemporary art museum and guest curated by composer Ted Hearne.

Braxton released his Nonesuch debut album, Hive 1, last year; Q calls it "a sonically absorbing experience."

---

Rhiannon Giddens concludes a week-long tour with cellist Leyla McCalla and singer-songwriter Bhi Bhiman titled Swimming in Dark Waters: Other Voices of the American Experience, with performances at Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University in Washington, DC, tonight, McCelvey Center in York, South Carolina, tomorrow, and Memorial Hall at UNC Chapel Hill on Sunday.

The concerts, a celebration of Black History Month, examine the history of protest, subversion, and cultural resistance from musicians of color throughout the history of the United States, from the original inhabitants to recent immigrants, exploring the songs of resistance of the South, both old and new; the deep history of protest songs from McCalla's Haiti and Louisiana; and the modern outsider-looking-in observations of first-generation American Bhiman.

Giddens was recently featured in the Irish Echo, which praised “the soulful, R&B, grassroots Americana depth that defines her character as a musician.”

---

Kronos Quartet gives two performances at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, as part of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s New Musical Festival, tonight and Sunday. Tonight’s concert, entitled Moments in Time, includes Laurie Anderson’s “Flow” (from Homeland), the Who’s homage to composer Terry Riley, and works commissioned through Kronos’s Fifty for the Future program. On Sunday, Kronos joins the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, led by Music Director Bramwell Tovey, for City of Angels, performing Thomas Newman’s Los Angeles–inspired piece It Got Dark and two world premieres.

---

Brad Mehldau, currently touring Europe, performs two shows in Belgium with the Brussels Philharmonic this weekend: at De Bijloke Muziekcentrum Gent tonight and Cultuurcentrum Hasselt tomorrow. On the program are original works by Mehldau and the music of Charles Ives and Aaron Copland.

---

Randy Newman performs at the Lyric Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday. He is featured in a career-spanning profile in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. "The reality emerges that Newman actually has cracked the Great American Songbook," says writer David Kamp, "if not in quite the way he imagined when young." You can read the piece, in its entirety, here.

---

Chris Thile gives a solo concert at the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island in Fernandina Beach, Florida, on Sunday, as part of the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival. On the program are selections from Thile’s 2013 Nonesuch album of Bach Sonatas and Partitas, along with some of his own pieces.

And on that note, selections from Thile’s Bach album will be featured on BBC Radio Scotland’s classical music show Classics Unwrapped hosted by Jamie MacDougall this Sunday night after 10 PM. Fans around the world can tune in on bbc.co.uk.

No stranger to radio, Thile has been making headlines recently as he prepares to take over as host of American public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion. Having co-hosted or guest-hosted the show a number of times this year, bringing the likes of Paul Simon, Andrew Bird, and his fellow Punch Brothers on stage, "Thile," says the Minnesota Public Radio News, “stands on the edge of something exciting.” He joins Garrison Keillor in co-hosting again, from The Town Hall in New York, in April.

---

Rokia Traoré, touring France behind her recently released album Né So (Home), plays the Palais du Littoral in Dunkirk on Saturday.

Né So has received rave reviews, with NPR calling it a "gorgeous new album" from a "fantastically gifted" artist. The Times, in its four-star review, says: "Traoré has made the album of her career ... This accessible yet sophisticated album offers its own defiance against hard times." Uncut exclaims: "Brave, challenging and arrestingly original, Traoré may just have gone and made the finest indie-rock album to emerge from arguably the world's most musical continent."

Traoré follows her French dates with stops in Amsterdam, Brussels, and Geneva. She then heads to the United States in late March for shows in New York City, DC, and Savannah. For tickets, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.