From the Japanese duo U900 to the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, to pop acts like Amanda Palmer and Zee Avi, to the irreproachably cool tUnE-yArDs, you can barely avoid musicians trying out a tiny new axe these days. The trend may have reached...

The political and military chaos in Libya is about to enter its sixth month. As the rebels wage war against Muammar Gaddafi from their capital in Benghazi, and NATO air strikes continue to target his forces, subtler forms of protest that don't make...

Jennifer Higdon is a rarity in contemporary classical music: a serious composer with populist appeal. Last year she won a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy for two different concertos. And this summer you can hear her work played around the country and...

Pandora dominates the field of music streaming, with its playlists generated by algorithm. (Founder Tim Westergren explained the process to Kurt Andersen last summer.) But a worthy opponent is emerging: Turntable.fm. Instead of sophisticated algorithms, Turntable.fm has you and your fellow listeners do the work of playlisting for each other. In the first month, the site claims 140,000 users, suggesting that the programmers might be missing something.

When jazz saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa was still a student at Berklee College of Music, his older brother gave him an album called Saxophone Indian Style — as a joke. Mahanthappa had been suspicious of American jazz’s sampling of Indian...

Kim Burrell’s gospel runs deep. Her father was a pastor, her mother an evangelist, and Burrell grew up singing in the Church of God in Christ. She’s one of the most influential younger singers in gospel, but her turn toward love songs has caused an uproar ...

How much time did you spend today on Facebook? Or, put another way, how much of your day has been irretrievably sucked away by Facebook? It’s easy to lose hours commenting and liking, friending and unfriending.  Studio 360’s resident folk singer Scott Blaszak has been spending...

Video: "(It's Hard to Ignore Those) Facebook Walls"

At 91 years of age, Kitty Wells is the oldest living member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. And she can still surprise unsuspecting listeners. Despite her demure gingham dresses and sweet plaintive melodies, Wells was a radical. Some of her songs all but declare infidelity and promiscuousness.  Laura Cantrell — a singer and songwriter, and a...

Video: Laura Cantrell performs “I Don't Claim to Be an Angel”

If you’ve ever watched South Park, you know that a few of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's favorite things are organized religion and musical theater.  In 2003, they did a musical episode all about Joseph Smith and the founding of Mormonism.  This year the show's creators upped the ante considerably, teaming with composer Robert Lopez to...

Video: Robert Lopez performs “I Believe”

Merrill Garbus is the performer and multi-instrumentalist behind tUnE-yArDs — a music project that blends African-inspired rhythms and vocals with electric bass and saxophone. But she only discovered music after a failed career as a puppeteer. She tells Kurt...

Video: tUnE-yArDs performs songs from the new album w h o k i l l

An old ukulele — bought at an Army-Navy store — started Merrill Garbus on the path to drum-looping, face-painting renown with her band tUnE-yArDs. She told Kurt Andersen that her mother's uke helped her make the career switch from aspiring puppeteer to inventive musician and critical darling.

When young Rickie Lee Jones first got famous in 1979, Time called her "The Duchess of Coolsville." Jones, who is touring this summer, is still unimpeachably cool. Kurt Andersen spoke with Jones when she...

Bonus Track: Rickie Lee Jones performs “The Moon is Made of Gold”

The recent flooding in Louisiana put New Orleans back on alert — but this time, the levees held, its rural neighbors were flooded, and the city was spared. The HBO drama Treme is set in post-Katrina New Orleans as the city’s people weather the aftermath of the storm. It’s the latest series from David Simon, best known for...

Slideshow: Scenes from Treme

One of Treme's distinctions is the way it uses local people — real people — to play smaller roles. One of those characters is a trumpeter named Kermit Ruffins, played by New Orleans trumpeter Kermit Ruffins. Jason Rhein caught up with Ruffins last year at...

Bonus Track: Kermit Ruffins' “Hey Naa”

The 10^th season of American Idol just ended last week — and its impressive ratings prove we’re still suckers for a pop star Cinderella story. But how do you get from singing in your shower to performing on TV to millions of people? You might try Boston’s Berklee College of Music, one of the top...

How did you spend Monday night? Here in Studio 360, we tapped a keg, lined up some killer acts, and hung out with 150 of our closest friends at WNYC's Jerome L. Greene Performance Space. We'll air the whole show next week, but until then, you can watch some choice excerpts of performances by comedian Eugene Mirman and the band tUnE-yArDs.

Even after they became world superstars, the band R.E.M. never quite followed the pop mainstream.  And a lot of that has to do with the band’s frontman, Michael Stipe. Stipe has a distinctive voice and enigmatic lyrics.  But he’s also a photographer and filmmaker.  For 30 years, R.E.M. has released videos that...

Christian fundamentalist Harold Camping believes the apocalypse will come on Saturday (not in 2012 as the Mayans predicted), and is doing his best to make sure you're prepared.   The hip music magazine L.A. Record is also getting its readers ready by asking them to contribute original songs to their "Judgment Day Mixtape" — a collection of tunes that should be the perfect soundtrack to the rapture.

What songs would you put on an apocalypse-themed mixtape?

Singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega (of the massive 1980s hits "Tom’s Diner" and "Luka") tells the life story of one of her favorite writers in a new one-woman show called Carson McCullers Talks About Love, several decades in the making. In nearly all her work (The Member of the Wedding, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter), McCullers wrote about the loneliness of...

Video: Suzanne Vega performs "Song of Annemarie (Terror, Pity, Love)"

The Mississippi River is overflowing as it hasn't in most of our lifetimes. The situation is being compared to the devastating flood of 1927, which inundated 27,000 square miles. That disaster led to a new era of flood-control construction, including locks, dams, levees, and spillways throughout the waterway. The 1927 flood also inspired a generation of the blues musicians, like Kansas Joe McCoy and...

Bonus Track: Music from the 1927 flood