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.

Punch Brothers recently concluded a US tour with Béla Fleck’s My Bluegrass Heart featuring Sierra Hull. You can now watch a holiday medley from their December 15 Indianapolis show—including “The Chipmunk Song,” “Sleigh Ride,” and letters to Santa—here. Punch Brothers' latest album, Hell on Church Street, a reimagining of, and homage to, the late bluegrass great Tony Rice’s landmark solo album Church Street Blues, has been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album.

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'.

Cécile McLorin Salvant performs "Optimistic Voices / No Love Dying"—the Grammy-nominated song from her Grammy-nominated Nonesuch debut album, Ghost Song—in a new video recorded during her two-night engagement at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center this past spring. The video features Salvant along with pianist Sullivan Fortner, percussionist Keita Ogawa, guitarist Marvin Sewell, flutist Alexa Tarantino, and bassist Yasushi Nakamura, all of whom are on the album. Salvant arranged the songs written by Harold Arlen/Herbert Stothart/Yip Harburg and Gregory Porter, respectively. You can watch it here.

Molly Tuttle was on California Now, a podcast exploring the people and places of the state, to talk about Grass Valley, the Northern California site of the annual Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival, which the South Bay–raised artist would attend with her dad and where she was first exposed to the bluegrass music that inspired her to play. Tuttle wrote the song “Grass Valley” for Crooked Tree, her Grammy-nominated Nonesuch debut album with her band Golden Highway. You can hear what she had to say and a solo performance she made of the song and the album's title track for the show here.

Caroline Shaw was on BBC Radio 3’s This Classical Life to talk with host Jess Gillam about some of their favorite music, including works by Clara Schumann, Mark Guiliana, Scott Joplin, Sarah Vaughan, Josquin des Prez, Stanley Myers, Kae Tempest, and Schubert. You can hear the music and conversation here. Evergreen, Shaw’s new album with Attacca Quartet, has been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and made several year’s best lists, including NPR Music's 10 Best Classical Albums of 2022 (“some of the finest string quartet music of recent times ... irresistible”).

Rhiannon Giddens is on Sing for Science, the science and music podcast from Talkhouse. The focus of the episode, titled “At the Purchaser’s Option: Listening for the African Diaspora in American Music,” is the opening track to her 2017 album, Freedom Highway. Giddens, host Matt Whyte, and ethnomusicologist Dr. Portia Maultsby discuss "At the Purchaser's Option," the African origins of the banjo, and the connection between African and African American music. You can hear it here.

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.”

Makaya McCraven stopped by KEXP in Seattle to perform four songs from his new album, In These Times: "Dream Another," "In These Times," "The Knew Untitled," and "This Place That Place." He was joined by Jeff Parker on guitar, Junius Paul on bass, and De'Sean Jones on saxophone, flute, and EWI. You can watch the session, including a conversation with host Marco Collins, here.

Hurray for the Riff Raff performed several songs from their new album, LIFE ON EARTH, at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, last month as part of NPR Music’s 15th anniversary celebrations. You can watch the set here. LIFE ON EARTH made NPR Music’s list of The 10 Best Rock Albums of 2022 and NPR Music’s Ann Powers list of The 20 Best Albums of 2022. "LIFE ON EARTH sounds like what Segarra describes as ‘nature punk,'" Powers writes, "cosmic in feel, anthemic in reach."

The Black Keys have announced initial details of the European leg of their Dropout Boogie Tour starting in June. Following shows in Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the band will be joined by special guests Spoon for concerts in Paris, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Cologne, and Hamburg. The Black Keys will play festival sets in Italy, Portugal, and Spain in July. Pre-sale tickets for the June dates will be open to the band’s fan club, The Lonely Boys & Girls Club, on December 13; general on-sale begins December 16. This marks The Black Keys’ first European tour since 2015. 

Cécile McLorin Salvant performs "Moon Song"—from her Grammy-nominated Nonesuch debut album, Ghost Song—in a new video recorded during her two-night engagement at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center this past spring. The video features Salvant along with pianist Sullivan Fortner, percussionist Keita Ogawa, guitarist Marvin Sewell, flutist Alexa Tarantino, and bassist Yasushi Nakamura, all of whom are on the album. You can watch it here.