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Just as Thao and her band The Get Down Stay Down were about to go on the air and play their new songs, all four of them began swearing like longshoremen. Turns out they needed get it out of their system before hitting the radio and playing new songs.

It's been a strange ride for singer Rachel Taylor Brown: a nervous breakdown, eight years of solitude as a hermit, an endless struggle with both loving and hating humanity. It's the kind of fear and anguish that can drive someone deep into their own mind. But Brown looked outward at a troubling world and discovered some the haunting, humorous and ultimately beautiful songs that appear on her latest CD, Half Hours With the Lower Creatures.

Cavedoll is prolific, almost to the point of absurdity. The neo-new wave group from Salt Lake City, UT has released 13 albums in the past year, with a total of ten albums due out in 2008. At the root of it all is the hyper-active imagination of frontman, producer and multi-instrumentalist Camden Chamberlain. For Cavedoll's latest release, No Vertigo, Chamberlain and the rest of his band serve up a hip-shaking burst of feel-good energy, inspired by '80s synth pop, electronica and punk.

With an equal emphasis on rock, jazz, and soul, the New York-based singer draws on a wide range of influences, from Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones to Mavis Staples and Etta James. Hear Cotton perform at WXPN and World Cafe Live.

Rock guitar legend Steve Winwood describes his latest album, Nine Lives, as "the opposite of a concept album." Each track tells a story drawing from the different styles that shaped his career, including time in the bands Traffic and Spencer Davis Group. Hear an interview from WXPN.

The saxophonist and composer grew up in the Windy City hating the avant-garde jazz that her father played. Now based in New York, her new album embraces her Chicago roots, as well as her "daddy's crazy music."

Deceptively complex, Cosí fan tutte is a comic farce that often leaves romantically inclined listeners more than a little bit queasy. The libretto springs plenty of jokes, but Mozart's music tells you to hold on to your heart — you never know which way the romantic winds might blow.

Burial's "Ghost Hardware" features a warm Middle Eastern vocal hook, along with a clipped soul-singer sample featuring the words "love you" that hints at a desire for warmth and connection. But the crackly lo-fi production, the fall-off-a-cliff bass line, and nervous drums invoke existential terror.

Gustav Mahler once said, "The symphony is a world; it must contain everything." For the famous composer, that meant writing symphonic music with the dramatic punch and poignancy of opera.

The Danish duo mixes '50s and '60s rock with harmonies inspired by The Everly Brothers and The Ronettes. But the band is no mere throwback, with an increasingly appealing and timeless rock catalog. The Raveonettes give an interview and performance on WXPN.