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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.

Thievery Corporation describes its music as "outernational," with an "appreciation and empathy for all people around the globe." It's a fitting credo for a band that imagines the music of Jamaica, Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East as the root of its electronic music. Here, the duo talks about its politically charged new album, Radio Retaliation.

The Austin group began as a collective of three songwriters who shared the same Wednesday-night gig. It became a country-rock quintet who rode a wave of local buzz on the way to releasing three recordings in less than three years.

Jeb Loy Nichols has recorded a half-dozen albums since the late 1990s and before that, fronted the band The Fellow Travelers. Rock critic Ken Tucker says Nichols' new album, called Parish Bar, coheres as one of his more adventurous musical experiments.

News from Somalia usually involves violent warlords or pirates hijacking ships off the coast. Other than that, average Somalis don't have much of a voice. The rapper K'Naan is trying to change that, and in the world of hip-hop, he's become an artist to watch.

George Tillman Jr.'s sketch of the life and death of the Notorious B.I.G. looks at how the Brooklyn rapper changed hip-hop. Corey Takahashi takes a look back at the man who would become Biggie Smalls.