Trumpeter/composer Ambrose Akinmusire and guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson's album Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings is due June 12 on Nonesuch. It features four new compositions by each musician plus one collaboration; you can hear the track "Soundcheck" now. The duo, long admirers of each other’s musicianship, began playing together periodically back in 2009. They rehearsed the music on Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings in January 2025, just before performing it at the NYC club The Stone; they recorded the album the next day at Sear Sound. “I think it’s partly a shared aesthetic and an ease of communication. I feel comfortable to try whatever,” Halvorson says. Akinmusire concurs, “I think it’s rare to find an improviser that all goes and nothing has to go at all. It’s rare to feel like you don’t have to do anything and you can do anything. And that’s what I love about playing with Mary.”

Robert Plant and Saving Grace—vocalist Suzi Dian, drummer Oli Jefferson, guitarist Tony Kelsey, banjo and string player Matt Worley, and cellist Barney Morse-Brown—were on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to perform "Higher Rock," from their 2025 debut album, Saving Grace, and the Led Zeppelin tune "Ramble On" last night. You can watch both performances here. Plant was on the show on the release of Saving Grace last fall. He and the band, who concluded their US spring tour in NYC this week, head to Latin America in May and back to Europe in June. They release a vinyl EP, Saving Grace: All That Glitters..., on Record Store Day, Saturday, April 18. Plant is this year's Record Store Day Record Store Legend. 

Flea's debut solo album, Honora, is now the No. 1 jazz album around the world. Honora marks his first-ever chart debut as a solo artist, landing at No. 1 on this week's UK, French, and German jazz charts. As the No. 1 new jazz album in America, Honora was the top debut on Billboard's Overall Jazz Albums and Contemporary Jazz Albums charts (no. 2 overall), in addition to breaking the cumulative Top 40 in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, and more. Honora is also one of just two jazz albums on this week's Billboard 200.

Premiere screenings of an album-length concert film by Charlie Weinmann, capturing the August 2025 Lodge Room performance that became guitarist/band leader Jeff Parker's new ETA IVtet album, Happy Today, will take place in select cities in late April and early May, before the album's release on May 15. The film will be released worldwide on May 29.

"This record really was a next chapter for me in my life and as an artist, this time in my life that I thought was an ending suddenly was like, oh my God, it's only just beginning," Hurray for the Riff Raff, aka Alynda Segarra, tells Song Exploder host Hrishikesh Hirway on the show's latest episode, about their track "Alibi," from the album The Past Is Still Alive, a live performance of which can also be heard on the new recording Live Forever. "Especially when this song came out and the way that people responded to it, it felt immediately different than any other time in my career. It just felt like, whoa, I'm not giving up on this." You can hear the episode here.

Flea is on the latest episode of iHeartRadio's The Questlove Show. He talks with host Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson about his debut solo album Honora, the long road back to his first musical love, and the rituals that ground his creativity and daily life. You can watch their conversation here.

Tortoise, whose first new album since 2016, Touch, was released late last year, has announced several dates in the US and Canada this spring and summer, with festival sets at Stop/Time in Iowa City, Warm Love Cool Dreams in Chicago, Follow the Arrow in Catskill, and Montreal Jazz and shows in Brooklyn, King of Prussia, DC, Boston, Burlington, and Toronto. 

Flea is on the latest episode of NPR's World Cafe to talk with host Stephen Kallao about his new album, Honora. You can listen to their conversation and hear four songs from the album—"Morning Cry," "A Plea," "Thinkin Bout You," and "Wichita Lineman"—here.

Flea releases the album he has aspired to make for more than 35 years, Honora, today on Nonesuch Records. After a nearly five-decade (and counting) career as one of his generation’s defining rock bassists, he has returned to his first musical loves, jazz and trumpet. The New York Times says the album’s ten songs “embody a deep pathos.” This first full-length solo record features six original tracks composed and arranged by Flea – including “A Plea” and “Traffic Lights” (feat. Thom Yorke) – as well as interpretations of Frank Ocean and Shea Taylor’s “Thinkin Bout You,” George Clinton and Eddie Hazel’s “Maggot Brain,” Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman,” and Ann Ronell’s “Willow Weep for Me.” Watch the new visualizer for “Wichita Lineman” (feat. Nick Cave) and all other album visuals with direction, animation, and illustration by nespy5euro.

Flea was on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last night to perform his take on Frank Ocean's "Thinkin Bout You," from his upcoming debut solo album, Honora, out this Friday. Led by Flea’s electric bass and trumpet, the song features upright bass from Anna Butterss and strings arranged and orchestrated by Nate Walcott (Bright Eyes). Flea also joined Fallon on the couch to discuss the new album and come clean on the accident that led to the bandage on his forehead. You can watch the conversation and the performance, with musicians from the album—Butterss, guitarist Jeff Parker, drummer Deantoni Parks, and producer Josh Johnson on keyboard—and strings here.

Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Live Forever is now available digitally, with the CD and double LP due May 8. It was captured live over the course of two sold-out summer nights at the Old Town School of Folk Music in bandleader Alynda Segarra’s new home of Chicago. Spanning 14 songs, Live Forever presents their acclaimed 2024 album The Past Is Still Alive in its entirety, as well as a selection of set-defining staples, like “Pa’lante,” “Pyramid Scheme,” and LIFE ON EARTH’s “Precious Cargo” and “Rhododendron.”

Flea, whose debut solo album, Honora, is due March 27 on Nonesuch, stopped by for the Nonesuch Selects video series, in which artists visit the Nonesuch office, pick some of their favorite albums from the music library, and share a few words on their choices. He chose recordings by Henryk Górecki, Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, Brian Eno & David Byrne, Bulgarian State Television Female Choir, and Ambrose Akinmusire.