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The Irish rock band Bell X-1 has just returned with a new album of catchy pop and electronica, Blue Lights on the Runway. It's also back on World Cafe for a special session with legendary producer Steve Lillywhite.

When American composer John Adams was getting ready to write his opera Nixon in China, he warmed up his imagination with the image of Chairman Mao dancing a foxtrot. It became a seminal example of American minimalism, called The Chairman Dances.

A winter chill in New York City couldn't temper the genre-blending group's mellow attitude and natural charisma. In a recent trip to WFUV's studios, activist and frontman Franti led his band into an interview and studio performance.

The itinerant troubadour, composer and performer of "Suzanne," "Sisters of Mercy" and "Bird on a Wire" has a growl of a singing voice that seems to simmer and grumble up through the chords, almost like an earthquake. His new album, I'm Your Man, has already sold a quarter of a million copies in Europe.

A legend in Trinidad, Calypso Rose closed out globalFEST with the sensuous, vintage dance music of her Caribbean home. Having recorded her early hits in the mid-'60s, Rose is a venerable diva of an all-but-vanished style.

The accordion has traveled the world, and its sound has been altered by every culture it touches. Music critic Banning Eyre says Argentinean Chango Spasiuk takes lowbrow music from the countryside and transforms it into sophisticated urbanite fare. He reviews Spasiuk's new album, Pynandi Los Descalzos.

The Revelations' members, including Williams, revive '60s and '70s soul, yet there's a modern quality to their sound that suggests they're not bound to the confines of a jukebox. Hear songs from the group's debut EP, Deep Soul.

The Washington, D.C.-based singer frames his new concept album around the tragic story of Disney actor Bobby Driscoll. Come Back to the Five and Dime Bobby Dee, Bobby Dee is infused with American folk, blues and '50s doo-wop.

A new recording of Allegro, a 1947 musical by Rodgers & Hammerstein, has just been released on CD. Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization President Ted Chapin joins Fresh Air to discuss the musical.

Utrillo Kushner is best known as the drummer for the neo-psychedelic rock band Comets On Fire, but he also heads up a different musical project: Colossal Yes. The band, based out of Oakland, Calif., features Kushner trading in the drums for the piano. It might seem like an odd move, but the transition is smooth for Kushner, who says he's played piano for roughly a decade now.