Natalie Merchant's new self-titled album is due May 6. The video for the song "Giving Up Everything," directed by Dan Winters and featuring the first music to be heard from the album, has premiered on NPR's First Watch. "Rarely is an artist as honest and revealing as Natalie Merchant in her new video and song, 'Giving Up Everything,'" says NPR Music's Bob Boilen. "Watch the video, let it settle in your bones, and watch again." You can do so here.

Nonesuch Records releases City Noir—comprising the title piece by composer John Adams and the debut recording of his Saxophone Concerto—on May 6, 2014. Both pieces are performed by the St. Louis Symphony led by Music Director David Robertson. Saxophonist Timothy McAllister is featured on both pieces. The City Noir album is available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store.

The Barbican's Contemporary Music Podcast offers a taste of what's to come in the Barbican's marathon weekend, Explorations: The Sound of Nonesuch Records, and wider Nonesuch celebration in May. The latest edition of the podcast is devoted to these events, featuring interviews with Nonesuch Records President Bob Hurwitz, Carolina Chocolate Drops' Rhiannon Giddens, and composer/pianist Timo Andres. "Musical visionaries and true pioneers have been recorded by the label in the last 50 years," says the Barbican, "and here we celebrate their legacy, their free spirit and what's still to come." Listen to the podcast here.

Today marks the reissue of Emmylou Harris’s groundbreaking album Wrecking Ball, produced by Daniel Lanois. It features the remastered original album, a bonus CD of previously unreleased material, and a DVD of the behind-the-scenes documentary Building the Wrecking Ball. The San Francisco Chronicle calls the album "one of the crowning achievements of both of their careers, one of the finest albums by anyone in the past two decades." The reissue earns five stars from Mojo and Uncut, which calls it "ambitious and audacious ... a masterpiece." Harris and Lanois are on tour now, performing music from the album.

Nonesuch celebrates Kronos Quartet, long known as interpreters of music from around the world, in its 40th anniversary year with two releases: Kronos Explorer Series, a box set of five classic albums from five different parts of the world, and A Thousand Thoughts, a new album that looks at Kronos’s geographically wide-ranging sources, featuring music from 14 different countries. Both are out today in North America (international release April 21). Kronos continues its anniversary celebration at the Switchboard Music Festival in its hometown of San Francisco this Saturday.

Toumani Diabaté, widely recognized as the greatest living kora player, and his eldest son Sidiki, release the recording Toumani & Sidiki on World Circuit on May 19. The Guardian has called it "the finest Toumani collaboration since his classic work with Ali Farka Touré." The album, produced by World Circuit’s Nick Gold with engineer Jerry Boys, is a set of unaccompanied kora duets, featuring both obscure, almost forgotten kora pieces and a new look at some Mandé classics from Mali. With this album, Toumani aims "to show the positive side of Mali," to reassert the legacy of a country with access to untold musical riches. 

Nickel Creek's new album, A Dotted Line, debuted at #7 on the Billboard 200, the band's highest chart position to date! It's been a busy week for the group, with performances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, WNYC's Soundcheck, CBS This Morning Saturday, and A Prairie Home Companion. Nickel Creek, which begins its first US tour in seven years next week, has announced a new batch of tour dates for this summer. A limited pre-sale for most of the newly announced dates begins Wednesday, April 9, at 10 AM local time.

Nickel Creek performs on CBS This Morning Saturday and A Prairie Home Companion live from NYC ... Bombino, Fatoumata Diawara play Savannah Music Festival ... Carolina Chocolate Drops tour Northeast ... Shawn Colvin plays two nights outside Chicago ... Jeremy Denk makes Tucson Symphony debut ... Emmylou Harris takes Wrecking Ball to San Francisco ... Kronos Quartet premiere multimedia work at Berkeley ... Brad Mehldau Trio tour out West ... Joshua Redman is in Albuquerque ... Rokia Traoré tours France ... and more ...

Bombino kicks off the latest leg of his world tour with two sets at the Savannah Music Festival in Georgia, tonight, alongside Fatoumata Diawara. His month-long North American tour heads next to the TransAtlantic Festival in Miami, out West and back down South, including festival sets at Coachella, New Orleans JazzFest, and more. Bombino also plays a number of European and North American festivals this summer.

Emmylou Harris’s groundbreaking album Wrecking Ball will be reissued on Tuesday, April 8. In celebration, Harris and producer Daniel Lanois, along with Jim Wilson on guitar and Steven Nistor on drums, kick off an international tour at The Wiltern in LA tonight. The Los Angeles Times says: "Wrecking Ball provided an ambitious and richly textured template for the coalescing Americana music movement before it took on that name." The tour continues with stops in San Francisco, Detroit, Chicago, DC, Brooklyn, Boston, and Toronto, followed by European shows in the Netherlands, Belgium, and UK.

Nickel Creek performed "Destination," off the new album A Dotted Line, on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on NBC last night and gathered for a web-exclusive video to discuss how they wrote their earlier tune "Helena." Watch both videos here. The band performs live on WNYC's Soundcheck today at 2 PM ET. The Los Angeles Times says: "Fresh energy—and fresh ideas—course through A Dotted Line ... They’ve never blended their voices more thrillingly."

Conor Oberst visited the BBC studios yesterday to discuss his forthcoming album, Upside Down Mountain, on BBC Radio 6Music's Lauren Laverne program in the morning, also performing "You Are Your Mother's Child" and "Hundreds of Ways" off the new album, and the Jo Whiley show on BBC Radio 2 at night, offering another take on "Hundreds of Ways" and the beloved Bright Eyes song " First Day of My Life," one of Whiley's favorite tunes.