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The band's long-awaited performance at the Tiny Desk was both beautiful and, at times, intense, featuring three deeply personal songs by frontman Mike Hadreas.

Half of the mostly defunct band The Moldy Peaches, Green has put out his fifth solo full-length CD. The album's genre-jumping and stream-of-consciousness lyrics make the title, a term for disarray, seem apt. But the songs are melodic and imaginative.

Astatke is a well-born Ethiopian who fell in love with jazz in the early '60s and has been making music ever since. His most impressive effort, critic Robert Christgau says, is his latest album Inspiration Information, which he created in collaboration with the British experimental funk musicians in The Heliocentrics.

In this year of high gas prices, reviewer Meredith Ochs is already sick of the word "staycation." But she's found an Austin, Texas, band with a great new song — which doubles as a handy rationalization for spending a holiday at home.

NOMO has a tiny name, but the group makes a big impression when it drives into town. NOMO is eight musicians from Ann Arbor, Mich., with dozens of instruments and just one van. On Ghost Rock, the octet proves that its jazz- and funk-inspired instrumental music is much more than a Fela Kuti tribute.

Spending her early career in the British punk band X-Ray Spex, Poly Styrene is no stranger to making musical statements of principle on her own idiosyncratic terms. Her new album is Generation Indigo.

By the mid-1990s, the art-rock band Throwing Muses had found more than just critical success. But co-founding member Kristin Hersh almost didn't make it there.

For nearly three decades, Kim Wilson has been the voice and soul of the Texas band The Fabulous Thunderbirds. He's also an accomplished solo recording artist, and in the minds of many people, the greatest harmonica player performing today. His new CD is entitled Lookin' for Trouble. Wilson recently joined NPR's Scott Simon for a chat about his craft.

Joshua Redman nearly became a lawyer, but the pull of jazz was stronger. Redman's father was the famous saxophonist Dewey Redman, and the sounds of jazz inspired him to take up the sax himself at age 10.

Jonathan Meiburg sounds as focused and intense as ever on his band's ninth album, which is full of rock songs that churn and clatter with force, invention and mystery.