Sara Watkins will join Garrison Keillor and the cast of public radio's A Prairie Home Companion on a coast-to-coast concert tour this August and September that will take on the everlasting theme of romantic love, fittingly dubbed the Summer Love Tour. The tour kicks off August 10 at the Interlochen Arts Festival and runs through a mid-September closer in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Stephen Sondheim and the cast of A Little Night Music, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angela Lansbury, and Alexander Hanson, signed copies of the new cast album in New York City last week for more than 250 lucky fans upon the album's release. The day's events have been documented in a new video, now at nonesuch.com/media. The composer presented Lansbury with the Signature Theatre's Stephen Sondheim Award in DC on Monday.

Armenian-Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian's Nonesuch debut album, Gomidas Songs, has been nominated for a Juno Award for Classical Album of the Year: Vocal or Choral Performance. The Junos, Canada's music award, will be presented in a ceremony this Sunday in St. John's, Newfoundland, and will be broadcast on CTV.

Natalie Merchant is in New York City this week to celebrate the release of Leave Your Sleep with a flurry of activity, including a performance on WNYC's Soundcheck today. The Montreal Gazette gives the album a perfect five stars, dubbing it an "instant classic." Blogcritics says: "It's like these melodies and poems had been waiting around all of these years for Natalie Merchant to notice them." fRoots exclaims: "She has triumphed ... Leave Your Sleep is one of those albums that sounds like it just belongs; timeless and classic."

Laurie Anderson is in London for four nights to perform her latest work, Delusion, at the Barbican. The Evening Standard says "Anderson drew us into her dream-like world and fed us stories, poetic anecdotes, observations and meditations" through to the "bold, exciting ending." The Guardian, Times (UK), and Financial Times each give it four stars. She spoke with the BBC about the show and her new album, Homeland, from which will sign copies of a limited-edition vinyl single on Record Store Day, Saturday.

The Low Anthem returned to New York's Bowery Ballroom last night for another unforgettable performance and will stay on in New York through Friday's set at The Bell House in Brooklyn. The concert this Wednesday at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, is noteworthy both as a homecoming for the band and because proceeds from the show will now go to the United Way's Rhode Island Flood Recovery Fund.

Punch Brothers return with their second album, the Jon Brion-produced Antifogmatic, June 15 on Nonesuch. A special deluxe edition includes a four-song instrumental EP and a seven-song DVD filmed during the band’s residency at NYC’s The Living Room. Pre-orders of both the standard and deluxe editions are available now; the first 250 orders of the deluxe include an official Punch Brothers' cocktail recipe guide, signed by the band.

The Black Keys' new album, Brothers, due out May 18, is now available for pre-order as a limited-edition collectible hardbound book / deluxe edition of Brothers online only via the band’s newly redesigned website. The 56-page hardbound book includes never-before-seen live photos and an exclusive lithograph of the band. The Miami New Times previews the band's tour, saying: "Expect loud in all its dimensions, and expect a fathomless depth. Mostly, though, expect to be talking about this show throughout the rest of your life."

Caetano Veloso's US tour continues at LA's Greek Theatre Thursday after a set of what the New York Times calls "typically tuneful and smart" music in New York and one in DC. L.A. Weekly sees Veloso's latest album, zii e zie, as a "rewarding reinvention" of conventional sounds. KTVU in San Francisco, where Veloso heads Saturday for SFJAZZ, calls him a "living legend of Brazilian music."

The Low Anthem's headlining tour of North America brings the quartet back to the States and straight to New York's Bowery Ballroom tonight after two shows in Canada. Time Out New York calls it a Must-See Show; WNYC includes this "warm folk" in its Gig Alert. The Aquarian Weekly calls the band's Nonesuch debut album "an ambitious achievement." Paste takes a look at the forthcoming follow up, being mixed by Bright Eyes producer Mike Mogis.

Natalie Merchant's Leave Your Sleep is out now. It was featured on NPR's Morning Edition, and Merchant performed songs from it on ABC's Good Morning America. The BBC says that the album's many musical styles are unified by the "sheer ravishing beauty of the arrangements, combined with the tasteful, organic aesthetic." The Irish Times gives it a perfect five stars, saying Merchant "has delivered something special."

Afrobeat drumming legend Tony Allen makes his World Circuit / Nonesuch debut with Secret Agent, out today. The album is "pure Afrobeat," says the Boston Globe, "the liquid grooves, the conscious themes, the horn arrangements, and Allen’s complicated drumming." Slant gives four-and-a-half stars to this "vital, insistently probing work," calling it "joyful, colorful, uplifting music [that] finds the best in all its influences, leaving us with a daring assemblage of styles that's impossible to adequately define."