k.d. lang and will be the guest on today's episode of NPR's World Café, talking with host David Dye about Sing it Loud, her new album with the Siss Boom Bang, and performing songs from the record. lang and the band bring their extensive North American tour back up to her homeland of Canada with performances at the Regina and Edmonton folk festivals this weekend. The Regina festival's artistic director says: "She is breathtaking."

The Carolina Chocolate Drops, who open for Bob Dylan this Friday, return to their home state of North Carolina to perform at the Museum of Art in Raleigh on August 27. In honor of the local show, the Chocolate Drops are hosting a special eBay auction, featuring an autographed banjo from the band, to benefit the Center for the Study of the American South in Chapel Hill and its music programming. The auction is open through August 13.

As announced last month, Modern Music, a collaboration between pianists Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays and composer/arranger Patrick Zimmerli, will be released by Nonesuch on September 20. Now comes the album's cover, which features American Modernist painter Charles Sheeler's Classic Landscape. The album is available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store with an instant download of the title track included at checkout. All About Jazz, reviewing Mehldau's latest solo album, Live in Marciac, raves: "It's a stunning document that somehow manages to satisfy the most basic melodic appetites while still confounding conventional understanding of human capability."

"Crystalline," the first single off Björk's multimedia project Biophilia, is featured on NPR's All Songs Considered. "God bless Björk," says producer Robin Hilton. "We need artists like her ... Something comes along like the iPad or the iPhone, and they just see things differently. They take us in new, completely unexpected directions. They embrace technology and turn it into a new art form. I think that's just amazing." Björk discussed the project with BBC Radio 4's Front Row. Wired features an interview with Scott Snibbe, the leader of the team behind the Biophilia App, and Spinner spoke with some of the inventors behind the unique musical instruments commissioned for the project.

Randy Newman, who performed with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra over the weekend, concludes his Australian tour with two shows with the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House this week. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald laud Newman as "one of the greatest songwriters of the past 50 years," whose "work proves yet again that on the big questions, all too often the artists can illuminate the truth better than the essayists, the journalists and, perhaps less surprisingly, the politicians." His recent appearances on ABC Radio National's The Music Show and 702 ABC Sydney Afternoons are now online.

Malian singer Oumou Sangare concluded her North American tour this weekend with shows in Brooklyn and Maine. "Regal, righteous and funky," exclaims New York Times music critic Jon Pareles, "the Malian singer and songwriter Oumou Sangare commanded the stage of Celebrate Brooklyn! on Friday night at the Prospect Park Bandshell." Through her music and lyrics, this longtime champion of women's rights took on "the traditional West African singer’s role as community conscience while delivering her messages with a modern kick."

The Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont, has announced its 2011–12 season, and on the schedule are four Nonesuch artists: k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang open the venue's concert season on September 23, Laurie Anderson follows with her piece Delusion in October, Cheikh Lô joins a multi-artist celebration of James Brown in November, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops play the Flynn in January.

This past weekend, the Newport Folk Festival offered the sold-out crowd two beautiful summer days of music from performers including the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Emmylou Harris, Wanda Jackson, and Chris Thile & Michael Daves. You can now listen to all of those sets online at NPR Music, from the ever "vital and contemporary" Harris to the "blazingly intense music" of Thile & Daves. The Boston Globe says that all the music proved "compelling and indebted to what preceded it."

Nonesuch Records recently published the cover of the forthcoming album featuring Steve Reich's WTC 9/11, performed by Kronos Quartet. The cover and our publishing of it have elicited a considerable response both on this website and elsewhere. Nonesuch Records President Robert Hurwitz offers a comment.

The Newport Folk Festival features sets from Emmylou Harris, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Wanda Jackson, Chris Thile, Michael Daves, plus Sara Watkins with The Decemberists and a special Low Anthem benefit performance ... Kronos Quartet performs Steve Reich's WTC 9/11 at Northern Ireland's Walled City Music Fest ... k.d. lang has three shows in California ... Jessica Lea Mayfield heads South ... Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redman close out duo tour at Marciac Jazz Fest ... Randy Newman continues Australian tour in Melbourne ... Donnacha Dennehy's Grá agus Bás closes out Cork's Reich festival ... Oumou Sangare plays free Brooklyn show ... Dawn Upshaw continues at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Fest ... and more ...

Björk unveils another piece of Biophilia with a look inside the Ultimate Edition of the forthcoming album. Presented in a lacquered and silkscreened oak hinged-lid case, the Biophilia Ultimate Edition consists of the Biophilia Manual along with 10 chrome-plated tuning forks, silkscreened on one face in 10 different colors, stamped at the back, with each fork adjusted to the tone of a Biophilia track, covering a complete octave in a non-conventional scale. It will be made to order and fabricated only once. Orders must be collected before August 12. Look inside the Ultimate Edition here.

Sara Watkins will join Garrison Keillor and the cast of public radio's A Prairie Home Companion on another cross-country tour that will take them from Alaska to Alabama this August and September on their second-annual Summer Love Tour. The concert tours will consist of "evenings of passionate duets, hot jazz, Catchup, English Majors and Poesy" and such favorite Prairie Home Companion elements as Guy Noir Private Eye, the Cowboys Dusty and Lefty, and all the latest News from Lake Wobegon.