Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra) shares the music video for “Alibi,” from their 2024 album, The Past Is Still Alive. “The Past Is Still Alive is an album grappling with time, memory, love and loss, recorded in Durham, NC, a month after losing my father,” Segarra says. “‘Alibi’ is a plea, a last ditch effort to get through to someone you already know you’re gonna lose. It’s a song to myself, to my Father, almost fooling myself because I know what’s done is done. But it feels good to beg. A reckoning with time and memory. The song is exhausted with loving someone so much it hurts. Addiction separates us. With memories of the Lower East Side in the early 2000s of my childhood, mixed with imagery of the endless West that calls to artists and wanderers.” The video is directed, produced, and edited by Eric Stafford, with creative direction by Segarra, and additional footage by Kat Sotelo.

Natalie Merchant shares the video for “Sister Tilly,” from her 2023 album, Keep Your Courage. The track is dedicated to Joan Didion and pays homage to the generation of women who influenced Merchant in the 1960s and ’70s when she was growing up and the video, directed by Matthew Shattuck, features archival footage from the era. “This song holds a very dear place on the album,” says Merchant. “It celebrates the life of a woman I created to embody traits of several beloved female friends of mine who have passed away. These were all beloved mother, auntie, and sister figures that I owe so much for all the nurturing love and care they gave me throughout my life. You may recognize Tilly qualities in a cherished adopted or blood relative or friend who was part of that generation of women who came of age during the mid 1960s-mid 1970s. As happens with songs, ‘Sister Tilly’ has already grown to signify a generation of women–more than just one woman. When I have performed it live over the past six months, I can feel the song’s resonance with the audience. I can tell that I’m not the only one who feels an urgency to give these women their due respect. We owe them so much more.”

Rhiannon Giddens collaborates with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project on a fundraising initiative and a powerful music video for her song “Another Wasted Life,” from her 2023 album, You're the One. The video, released on the tenth annual Wrongful Conviction Day, features twenty-two wrongfully convicted people, clients of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. It aims to raise awareness for the stories and voices of those who have experienced the injustices of the criminal legal system. Giddens filmed the video, directed by Daniel Madoff, in Philadelphia with the twenty-two formerly incarcerated people, who collectively spent more than 500 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. It features their names and the number of years that each spent wrongly incarcerated. The video was directed by Daniel Madoff. Inspired by the tragic story of Kalief Browder, a young man wrongfully incarcerated at New York City’s Rikers Island for three years, where he was subjected to nearly two years of solitary confinement, Giddens wrote “Another Wasted Life” as a reminder of the human toll exacted by wrongful convictions and the importance of prison reform.

Grammy Award–winning singer, songwriter, and musician Molly Tuttle and her band Golden Highway—Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (fiddle, harmony vocals), Dominick Leslie (mandolin), Shelby Means (bass, harmony vocals), and Kyle Tuttle (banjo, harmony vocals)—perform “Alice in the Bluegrass,” from their 2023 album, City of Gold. Filmed in Nashville, the video is directed and edited by Joshua Britt & Neilson Hubbard. City of Gold follows Tuttle’s acclaimed 2022 record, Crooked Tree, which won Best Bluegrass Album at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards and led NPR Music to call her “a female flat picker extraordinaire with agility, speed and elegance who distinctively brings American roots music into the spotlight,” adding that the album “marries the improvisatory solos of traditional bluegrass with singer-songwriter sophistication.”

Grammy Award–winning singer, songwriter, and musician Molly Tuttle and her band Golden Highway—Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (fiddle, harmony vocals), Dominick Leslie (mandolin), Shelby Means (bass, harmony vocals), and Kyle Tuttle (banjo, harmony vocals)—perform “Alice in the Bluegrass,” from their 2023 album, City of Gold. Filmed in Nashville, the video is directed and edited by Joshua Britt & Neilson Hubbard. City of Gold follows Tuttle’s acclaimed 2022 record, Crooked Tree, which won Best Bluegrass Album at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards and led NPR Music to call her “a female flat picker extraordinaire with agility, speed and elegance who distinctively brings American roots music into the spotlight,” adding that the album “marries the improvisatory solos of traditional bluegrass with singer-songwriter sophistication.”

The video for composer and guitarist Yasmin Williams' “Dawning,” featuring Aoife O’Donovan on vocals, Kafari on rhythm bones, and Nic Gareiss’ percussive dancing. Williams says: “‘Dawning’ has multiple meanings for me: the dawning of my professional music career and a new love in my personal life, the dawning sky that appeared when I first started writing this song, and me smiling to myself with dawning recognition that I get to create music that I love for a living and share it with the world. This song represents a major shift in how I approach my music and expands the possibilities of what my songs can be.” Video directed by Jonathan Howard.

Vagabon, aka Lætitia Tamko, shares the video for “Lexicon,” from her 2023 album, Sorry I Haven’t Called, directed by Kathleen Dycaico. The Mariah Carey–inspired “Lexicon” is the most jubilant track on an album comprising the most playful and adventurous music of Tamko’s career. She credits album co-producer Rostam (Vampire Weekend, HAIM, Clairo) with taking the song over the finish line and unifying her vision. “I wrote the song, the verses, the chorus, all of the bridge, and all of that, but I couldn't find a place for it on the record sonically,” she says. “When I revisited the album with Rostam in LA, he said give me a minute with it, and he just got it.”

A video about the making of Dynamic Maximum Tension, the 2023 Nonesuch Records debut from composer and bandleader Darcy James Argue and his Secret Society ensemble. “I’ve been incredible blessed that the musicians in Secret Society have been very fiercely loyal to me and to the music, most of them for many, many years now,” says Argue. “One of the great things about having a band with eighteen people in it is that you have eighteen different potential sources of individual inspiration from each of these musicians.” The video, filmed from the album's recording session at Power Station at BerkleeNYC in New York City, is directed by Reuben Hernandez.

A visualizer for “The Light,” from multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer Yussef Dayes' debut solo album, Black Classical Music. The track “celebrates the birth of my daughter Bahia,” says Dayes. “Born in February 2020, just before the whirlwind of Covid, a beautiful light came into my life. 2020 turned out to be one of the most special times in my life. Becoming a father to my beautiful princess Bahia, being able to take time from touring and nurture my family at home was something I’ll cherish forever. ‘The Light’ is a Dayes lullaby song. The sweet harpsichord is a sound that Bahia was captivated by, although it was also a song she fell asleep too. An ode to Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely,’ I wanted to add Bahia’s voice from footage & voice notes I’ve recorded over the last few years since her birth. Bahia introduces the song and shares her positive affirmations with her mum; something she can’t go to sleep without doing now. Thank you to Rocco Palladino on bass, Charlie Stacey on harpsichord and keys, Miles James on guitar and production, recorded by Christoph Skirl at Echo Zoo studios, Rory Cashmere on co-production & Russell Elevado on the beautiful mix. Love.”