The Buddha Machine plays MP3 files – like an iPod; only the Buddha Machine holds nine songs. And you don't get to pick them. Chris Roose talked with one of the machine's creators, Christaan Virant of the electronic band FM3.

Back in 1990, John Cale and Lou Reed, his bandmate from the Velvet Underground, wrote a song cycle about Andy Warhol, called Songs for Drella. John performs one for us in the studio.

When we asked graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister to pick his favorite album cover of all time, he chose a notorious design by Andy Warhol: The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers. Produced by Derek John.

John Cale tells Kurt about what it was like to work with the Pop art superstar in the 1960s.

Catherine Russell has been a back-up singer to the stars -- like Madonna, David Bowie, Paul Simon and Dolly Parton. Russell traces her rich musical journey from her legendary father's gig with Louis Armstrong to her new solo album, entitled Cat. Produced by Trey ...

Can a computer compose Baroque music as well as Bach? Some programmers and musicologists are trying to find out. Jeff Lunden explains why.

Elvis Costello has kept his fans on their toes by zig-zagging musically over the last twenty-five years. For his latest recording, My Flame Burns Blue, Costello teams up with a Dutch big band called Metropole Orkest. They play new songs and reinterpret old hits ...

Many of the New Orleans musicians who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina decided to make Austin, Texas their new home. In some ways, Austin and New Orleans are a natural fit: they're both big music towns with a reputation for tolerance. But their signature styles of music might as well ...

When Tom Long first heard the song "Born to Run" in the summer of 1976, he realized he was just like a character in a Bruce Springsteen song; living a life of quiet desperation in a dead-end job. So Tom joined the army.

In some ways, the career of film composer Hugo Friedhofer was a typical Hollywood story. He was a brilliant musician who created some of the most memorable scores -- like the soundtrack to The Best Years Of Our Lives -- but never got the fame he deserved. WNYC's

Singer k.d. lang has embraced a bewildering range of musical genres, from cowgirl punk to Tony Bennett standards -- but her fans don't seem to mind. There's a new reissue of lang's early country albums called Reintarnation. She joins Kurt to look back on her career and ...

The members of Refugee All Stars met in a refugee camp in Guinea, near their native Sierra Leone, a country shattered by civil war. KUT's Michael May met up with the band during their visit to South by Southwest festival in Austin, TX.

One of the most innovative jazz musicians of the '60s and '70s, Rahsaan Roland Kirk was most famous for playing three or four wind instruments simultaneously. He got this idea -- and many others -- from a vivid dream. Simon Rentner found out ...

The singer and guitarist Billy Bragg burst on to the music scene in Britain in the early 1980s, singing about love and Margaret Thatcher (not in the same song). He got his inspiration to be a musician from a stint in the army, and he sounded like ...

Birds are twittering, bees are buzzing, flowers are blooming. Kurt Andersen waxes pastoral about the music of spring, from "Peer Gynt" to Stravinsky's furious "Rite of Spring" to the teenage migration at Daytona Beach.

Justin Torres is a record nut, the kind who combs through stacks of dusty LPs looking for obscure gems. Torres told Studio 360's Chris Roose that he became obsessed with finding an R&B crooner named Daron "Darondo" Pulliam. Darando wasn't just a forgotten singer ...

Elvis Costello has kept his fans on their toes by zig-zagging musically over the last twenty-five years, taking detours into chamber music, jazz and creamy pop. For his latest recording, My Flame Burns Blue, Costello teams up with a Dutch big band called Metropole Orkest. They play ...

Stuart Oderman was a tough kid. He ran errands for small-time bookies in Newark, New Jersey, and used to skip school to go to the movies. One day at a matinee he met a faded star of the golden age of Hollywood, and his life was never ...

Jonathan Demme is best known for directing big Hollywood movies like Silence of the Lambs, but he also made a side career out of concert films and music videos. His latest film is an intimate portrait of the veteran rocker Neil Young.

It used to be in popular music that you'd feel the bass line more than hear it. Today's bass players have to balance their crucial supporting role with increasing duties as a soloist. Bill Leigh of Bass Player magazine and Victor Wooten, a virtuoso ...