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The husband-and-wife duo mixes rowdy folk-rock and rootsy ballads, with the help of a canine friend. Watch Shovels & Rope perform live in the NPR Music offices.

British singer-songwriter James Hunter's classic R&B sound has earned him an endorsement from fellow troubadour Van Morrison, who calls Hunter one of the "best-kept secrets in British R&B and soul."

Independent music critic Christian Bordal chats with Wayne Coyne, lead singer of the iconoclastic rock group The Flaming Lips about their new CD, At War With the Mystics. Have these "purposely oddball" musicians gone mainstream? Listen for yourself...

British songwriter Billy Bragg is best known in the United States for setting Woody Guthrie lyrics to music on the Mermaid Avenue CDs. Like Guthrie, Bragg is a populist, and often political, songwriter. His music from the 1980s is featured in a new boxed set.

Acclaimed Ugandan-born singer and instrumentalist Samite talks about how Africa's child soldiers inspired much of his latest CD, Embalasasa, and about his broader mission to help young African victims of war and those infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Billy Bragg has been one of England's most politically active singer songwriters since the early 1980s. He now celebrates his long career with a comprehensive box set, Billy Bragg Volume 1.

Artists can find inspiration in the unlikeliest places. Musician Anne Watts, of the band Boister, has been influenced by the time she spent volunteering in a mental institution — and by the odd things kids say.

Guitarist and singer Ali Farka Toure of Mali died March 7 at the age of 66. Farka Toure was a booster of Mali's march toward independence.

Pianist Bob James has been a major force in jazz for more than 40 years, and he's still going strong. His just-released a new solo CD is called Urban Flamingo.

Alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, who mastered Charlie Parker's style of bebop and went on to become an early advocate of the free jazz movement of the 1960s, has died. McLean's career spanned more than five decades.