Hurray for the Riff Raff—aka Alynda Segarra—has released an acoustic version of “SAGA,” a song from their acclaimed 2022 Nonesuch debut album, LIFE ON EARTH. You can watch a lyric video for the track here. 

Record Store Day, the annual celebration of independent record stores, will take place on Saturday, April 22, 2023, and included among the special releases on that day are the previously unreleased full-length live recording of The Black Keys' very first show at Beachland Tavern in Cleveland in 2002, on tangerine-colored vinyl; the first-ever vinyl release of The Magnetic Fields’ 2004 Nonesuch debut album, i, on gold-colored vinyl; and an alternate version of Wilco's landmark album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, featuring unique performances of all eleven songs, originally released as a bonus CD with the September 2022 issue of Uncut.

Brad Mehldau's Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles is out now on Nonesuch. The live solo album features the pianist and composer’s interpretations of nine songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and one by George Harrison. Although other Beatles songs have long been staples of Mehldau’s solo and trio shows, he had not previously recorded any of these tunes. The album, recorded in September 2020 at Philharmonie de Paris, ends with a David Bowie classic that draws a connection between The Beatles and pop songwriters who followed. "A great improvising pianist takes on The Beatles," says Mojo in its four-star review. "An inspired set that reveals new ways of hearing pop classics."

Thomas Adès’ Dante—a ballet score in three acts based on Dante Alighieri’s La Divina Commedia—was recorded by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel in concert at Disney Hall for the premiere recording, due April 21 on Nonesuch Records. Dante was first performed at the Royal Opera House as part of Wayne McGregor’s The Dante Project for the Royal Ballet, with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and with designs by visual artist Tacita Dean. “In any new shortlist of great ballet scores by Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Bartók, Ravel, Prokofiev, Britten, and Bernstein, Dante must newly be included for its musical invention alone,” exclaims the Los Angeles Times. “There is not a second in its 88 minutes that doesn’t delight. All of it is unexpected and wanted.” The collectable limited vinyl two-LP edition includes artwork by Dean and photography from the Royal Ballet’s performance.

Cécile McLorin Salvant’s new album, Mélusine, is due March 24 on Nonesuch; vinyl is due May 19. Mélusine is a mix of five originals and interpretations of nine songs, dating as far back as the 12th century, mostly sung in French along with Occitan, English, and Haitian Kreyòl. They tell the folk tale of Mélusine, a woman who turns into a half-snake each Saturday after a childhood curse by her mother. The track “D’un feu secret,” Michel Lambert’s 1660 air de cour, is available today, along with an animated video by Amanda Bonaiuto that may be seen here.

On his new album, COOKUP, due February 24, Sam Gendel and his friends and collaborators Gabe Noel and Philippe Melanson interpret R&B and soul hits originally released between 1992 and 2004 by Ginuwine, 112, Aaliyah, All-4-One, Soul 4 Real, Beyoncé, Joe, Erykah Badu, Mario, SWV, and Boyz II Men. Preorders include their take on 112’s "Anywhere," with Meshell Ndegeocello on vocals. "COOKUP marks another chance to convene with my good friends Phil Melanson and Gabe Noel," says Gendel. "For this occasion we hovered over a particular flavor: jams that we grew up with. We sculpted in sound our collective memories of this music. Meshell Ndegeocello took the 112 to another dimension (shoutout wayne12)."

I Love a Love Song!, the second album from Rachael & Vilray, is out now. The album features eleven new songs written by Vilray plus the 1930s classic "Goodnight My Love" written by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel. "This is a beautiful collaboration," says BBC Radio 2's Jamie Cullum. "I totally and utterly love that ... I will be listening to that throughout the year." "I Love a Love Song! is a truly lovely album, front to back," says No Depression. "More than anything, it’s two accomplished solo performers coming together with a mutual respect and love of musical standards with the goal of responding in kind." You can watch a new live performance video of the album track "Hate is the Basis (of Love)" here.

Vagabon (aka Lætitia Tamko) releases a new song, “Carpenter,” today. The single, co-produced by Tamko and Rostam, is her first newly created solo music since her 2019 critically acclaimed self-titled album. “‘Carpenter’ is about that humbling feeling when you desperately want to be knowledgeable, you want to be advanced, you want to be mature, forward thinking, and evolved,” Tamko explains. “It’s about being confronted with your limitations. It’s about that a-ha moment, when a lesson from the past finally clicks and you want to run and tell someone who bore witness to the old you, ‘I finally get it now.’” Vagabon will join Weyes Blood on tour this spring.

Hurray for the Riff Raff has released a new version of "LIFE ON EARTH"—the title track to their latest album and New York Times' Lindsay Zoladz's Song of the Year—featuring friends and fellow New Orleans musicians the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, recorded live in Esplanade Studios. The album was on many year's best lists, including those of NPR, Mojo, Rolling Stone, Uncut, and Brooklyn Vegan. Hurray for the Riff Raff tours North America with First Aid Kit in May.

Vinyl Me Please will release an exclusive Seaglass Wave vinyl edition of the soundtrack to the 2013 Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis, starring Oscar Isaac, in January 2023. Limited to 2,000 copies, the vinyl is pressed at Independent Record Pressing and will arrive in a single, direct-to-board, foil-stamped and numbered jacket. The soundtrack, produced by T Bone Burnett and Joel and Ethan Coen, with Marcus Mumford as associate producer, features 12 recordings created especially for the film and soundtrack, plus a previously unreleased recording of Bob Dylan performing his song "Farewell," recorded during the sessions for his album The Times They Are A-Changin'.

Classical singer Julia Bullock's solo debut album, Walking in the Dark, which NPR Music named one of The 10 Best Classical Albums of 2022, is out now. Bullock is joined on the album by London’s Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Christian Reif for Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and an aria from John Adams’s El Niño. With Reif on piano, she also performs a traditional spiritual and songs by Connie Converse, Oscar Brown Jr., Billy Taylor, and Sandy Denny. Bullock is "one of the singular artists of her generation," says the New York Times, "a singer of enveloping tone, startlingly mature presence and unusually sophisticated insight into culture, society and history.”

The first recording of Steve Reich’s Runner and Music for Ensemble and Orchestra, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted by Susanna Mälkki, released on CD and digitally on Nonesuch Records in September, is now available on vinyl. The New York Times calls Runner "a calmly luminous orchestral piece with the pulsating, propulsive rhythms that animate much of Mr. Reich’s music." The San Francisco Chronicle says that Music for Ensemble and Orchestra "is a beautiful and dramatically charged masterpiece, but its impact goes even further than that."