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Clarinetist Ben Goldberg became known in the early 1990s as a member of the New Klezmer Trio. Goldberg's new album is a memorial to soprano-saxophonist Steve Lacy, who died two years ago. It shows how well Goldberg understands his subject.

As introductions go, The Duke Spirit's "Cuts Across the Land" is a strong one. It's the sound of five different noisemakers playing essentially the exact same part, presenting the band as a single, unitary creature fueled by its own momentum.

Record producer Gregory Page was sitting in the back office of an Ocean Beach coffee shop called Java Joe's on an open-mic night when he heard what he thought was a female singer with a beautiful voice. He went into the shop and discovered that the voice belonged to a man: a folk singer and songwriter named Tom Brosseau.

Legendary soul singer Smokey Robinson talks with Farai Chideya about his new album, Timeless Love, a collection of standards.

If Herbie Hancock, Kraftwerk and Alan Lomax embarked on a field-recording expedition in Senegal, their collaboration might resemble Flügelschlag!'s exhilarating "Mendiani." The song's bluesy phrasing and unpredictable group interaction fit somewhere between hard-bop and early jazz-funk.

Every summer has that album: one that defines the season while hearkening back to the mysteries and epiphanies of summers past. The newest incarnation may well be the work of Sound Team, which transforms indie-rock into a meatier, more inventive genre.

In 1998, Argentine singer and songwriter Juana Molina walked away from a TV-acting career to explore music. She's toured constantly, opening for David Byrne and others. Her new, eerily beautiful CD is titled Son.

Fisher's music revels in the wonders of being alive through intricate piano-voice-and-guitar arrangements: From melodic ballads to rocking anthems, it all traces back to his early encounters with mortality.

But "Like A Star" is a real find: Languid and wistful, mild in a weirdly appealing way, it's a worshipful ode to a quarrelsome lover that's meandering, tentative and hook-free. It shouldn't sound nearly as good as it does, but Rae sells the song as if her life depended on it, uncovering new layers of longing and lust that probably weren't on the page to begin with. As a songwriter, Rae isn't fully developed, but as a rehabilitator of creaky jazz ballads, she's already first-rate.

Since the release of their debut album in 1994, Philadelphia natives G. Love and Special Sauce have been continuously refining their laid-back blend of blues, alternative rock, soul and hip-hop into tighter and more sophisticated song structures. The band's newest record, Lemonade, is a fantastic back-to-basics effort.