Soundcheck

New York-based classically trained composer and musician Kelly Moran's music draws on everything from classical to dance to metal, but ends up sounding like none of those. She has become known for her music for prepared piano – a regular piano whose strings have things like metal or wood placed on the strings to alter the sound. Moran has also worked with electronic keyboards, and has recorded music for unaltered, completely acoustic piano. (She has also composed for classical musician Margaret Leng Tan, toured with Oneohtrix Point Never and FKA Twigs, and worked with other visionary contemporaries like Kelsey Lu and Yves Tumor.) Her 2025 record, Don't Trust Mirrors (Warp Records), combines all three kinds of keyboards. Kelly Moran has brought her audio interface, her tools, and her bags of screws and bolts. She has prepared our piano, and plays in-studio. Set list: 1. Don't Trust Mirrors 2. Prism Drift 3. VeselaKelly Moran on sampling her own instrument and production techniquesKelly Moran's Track by Track notes on Don't Trust Mirrors

The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse. The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night. The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings. The Besnard Lakes are a rock band from Montreal with a knack for intriguing album titles. Their latest is The Besnard Lakes Are The Ghostly Nation, a collection of arty, often psychedelic songs about a society in crisis. The Besnard Lakes play live in our studio for the latest edition of Soundcheck Podcast.Set list: 1. Chemin de la Baie 2. Give Us Our Dominion 3. In Hollywood

The Brooklyn band called Momma revolves around the singing and songwriting team of Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten who combine gauzy vocal harmonies with walls of roaring guitars. Their 2022 album Household Name was a critical favorite, and their 2025 album, Welcome To My Blue Sky, builds on that success with songs about longing, infidelity, leaving people behind, and unknown futures. Etta and Allegra of Momma play uplugged versions of those songs, in-studio.Set list: 1. Bottle Blonde 2. I Want You (Fever) 3. Rodeo

The Icelandic keyboardist and composer Eydís Evensen has released three albums of music that blends classical lyricism with the repeating patterns of post-minimalist music. "Her compositions, guided by emotion, are intimate explorations of mourning, hope, reflection, and renewal—creating a world that invites listeners to feel their way through the music" (Lincoln Center event program). On her latest LP, Oceanic Mirror, one might hear reflections of Iceland's landscapes – glacial stillness, volcanic tension, the power and motion. Eydís Evensen plays new songs from the album, in-studio. She plays in New York at Lincoln Center's David Rubenstein Atrium on Jan. 9, 2026.Set list: 1. OM, Helena's Sunrise 2. Drifter 3. Winter's Void, Somnolent

The L.A-based, Brooklyn-born band called Boyish is built around the songwriting of India Shore and Claire Altendahl, and while they've been releasing music since 2018, they've just put out their debut album, called Gun. The album presents a series of scenes and character studies from a fictional American town called Gun, which seems to be haunted – by memories and dreams for sure, but also possibly by a ghost. All accompanied by roaring guitars and frayed vocals. Boyish plays in-studio for the Soundcheck Podcast.Set list: 1. Jumbos 2. A Town Called Gun 3. Prom

English singer and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Wolf built his sizable reputation on a blend of Baroque pop and arty, classically-informed folk-rock. But a series of setbacks kept him from the music scene for a decade, before he returned with an EP in 2023, and in June of 2025, his latest LP called Crying The Neck. Patrick Wolf joins us at the piano, to play new songs, in-studio. Set list: 1. Enter the Day 2. The Last of England 3. Foreland 

Both old and new, Austin-based band Black Pumas is centered around guitarist and producer Adrian Quesada and 27-year-old songwriter Eric Burton. Grammy Award-winning Quesada has played in Grupo Fantasma and Brownout, and accompanied artists from Prince to Daniel Johnston. Burton grew up in church and then got heavily involved in musical theater. He arrived in Austin in 2015 after busking his way across the country from Los Angeles, and connected with Quesada on the phone. From idea to session to self-titled debut album, they've been making music that is neither retro nor derivative, with influences ranging from Sam Cooke to Neil Young and Ghostface Killah. Now a touring machine, Black Pumas brings their skillful combination of folky strum, sticky funk, dusty psych, and old soul to an in-studio session. (From the Archives, 2019.)Set list: 1. Colors 2. Black Moon Rising 3. Oct 33 

Listen to music from American musicians, the harpist Ashley Jackson and the Oklahoma-based Cherokee singer and songwriter Ken Pomeroy. Both sets come from our Soundcheck series of live performances and interviews, available as a twice-weekly podcast, wherever you get podcasts. With her clever guitar playing and powerful stories, Oklahoma-based Cherokee singer and songwriter Ken Pomeroy draws on brutal honesty and the songwriting skills she has honed since she was 11 years old. She's already found herself on the big screen and small when her song “Wall of Death” made its way onto the Twisters soundtrack, while Hulu's Reservation Dogs featured her soul-mining gem, “Cicadas.” Pomeroy touches on her Native American heritage (mentioning coyotes – a troubling omen) and somewhat painful, personal past, as she plays songs from her 2025 album Cruel Joke (Rounder Records), in-studio.Ken Pomeroy Set list: 1. Stranger 2. Days Getting Darker 3. Flannel CowboyThen, listen to harpist, soloist, collaborator (Harlem Chamber Players), educator, and arranger Ashley Jackson as she presents music from her 2025 album called Take Me To The Water (Decca Records). In the American spiritual tradition, water is a powerful metaphor for freedom and for moving from this life to the next. Jackson's record takes listeners on a watery journey through works by Debussy, the jazz harpist Alice Coltrane, blues, and some classic spirituals. As Jackson declares in a statement about the record, ”Water is something that we all need. It sustains us, it gives us life. Take Me to the Water reminds us we have a choice: we can let water be the thing that divides us, or, it can allow us to come together through our shared humanity.” She plays some of her arrangements of spirituals on a sculpted maple harp, in-studio.Ashley Jackson's Set list: 1. River Jordan 2. Deep River II 3. Take Me to the Water I

Ye Vagabonds are brothers Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn. They grew up in rural Carlow but moved to Dublin in 2012 and became known on the traditional Irish, blues and folk scenes in the city, playing folk songs as well as their own original material, (Bandcamp). They're part a wave of bands who've remade or extended the folk tradition; they've also collaborated with members  of the Dublin new music group Crash Ensemble. Their award-winning music is a traditional mix of traditional Irish and European music, old time American tunes, sibling harmonies, and the music of the 1960s folk revival. Ye Vagabonds are working on their fourth album due in 2026, to be called All Tied Together, and they'll play some of their new songs, in-studio.Set list: 1 On Sitric Road 2. The Flood 3. DannyTitle "Backwards to Go Forwards" by Myles O'ReilyPhoto courtesy of Aiken Promotions 

Cochemea is a sax player, composer and arranger who spent some years playing vintage-style soul with Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, as well as stints with Amy Winehouse, David Byrne, hip hop duo Run The Jewels and dozens more. Born Cochemea Gastelum into an Indigenous Yaqui family in California, he's found time over the past few years to release three albums of his own music, the latest being Vol. III: Ancestros Futuros. These albums don't attempt to untangle the knot of Indigenous, Spanish, and American cultural interactions over the centuries, instead using them as musical source material. With a lightly processed alto sax sound and lots of percussion, Cochemea and his band create songs that usually don't have words, although wordless vocals, chanted or sung, are part of the sonic tapestry. The result is music that is not only beyond category, it almost seems beyond time, as the album title suggests. Cochemea and his band have filled our studio, mostly with percussion instruments to play a live set. (-John Schaefer)Set list: 1. Otros Mundos 2. Ancestros Futuros 3. Omeyocan

The now London-based Polish pianist and composer Hania Rani quickly attracted fans with her 2019 album of solo piano works in the post-classical style, a blend of classical lyricism and minimalist patterns. Her later albums expanded to include electronics, and her voice; she is equally versed in the music of composers like Philip Glass and bands like Radiohead. But her new record is something different – a four part piano concerto with orchestra, called Non Fiction, which is a reflection on the human cost of war. The work was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, with a 45-piece orchestra and experimental instrumentalists Rakhi Singh (Manchester Collective), Jack Wylie (Portico Quartet), and percussionist/composer Valentina Magaletti. Hania Rani performs the piano part of the opening movement of the piece Non Fiction, and other original works, in-studio. Set list: 1. Non-Fiction I - Sonore 2. Nostalgia 3. F Major

Master violinist/vocalist/composer L. Shankar (aka Shenkar) has spent the past four decades developing a personal style that ranges from strict Indian classical music to Western instrumental pop although usually he lands somewhere in the middle. Since playing his first solo concert at the age of seven, he has gone on to accompany many of South India's leading vocalists and become a major soloist. Schooled in voice, violin, and the drums, he has composed new ragas and folk songs, and played with countless other master musicians. In the 1970s, with John McLaughlin, Zakir Hussain, Vikku Vinayakram, and Ramnad Raghavan, he co-founded the legendary Indo-jazz group Shakti. In the 1980s, he introduced a custom-made 10-string double violin capable of covering the whole range of the orchestra's string section from violin to double bass. He has collaborated with Frank Zappa and Peter Gabriel and has continued to expand the international audience for Indian music, often combining North Indian (Hindustani) and South Indian (Carnatic) styles, (Robert Browning Associates program notes, 2022). L. Shankar performs original works, in-studio.Set list: 1. Ananda Nadamadum Tillaj Sankara 2. Ganapathiye Varuvaai  3. Shamudu

The Australian-born musician and songwriter Tommy Emmanuel is a virtuoso guitarist and Grammy winner who has played with everyone from the legendary Chet Atkins to younger guitarists like Jason Isbell and Billy Strings. Long based in Nashville, he's been releasing solo albums pretty regularly since 1979.  His new record is called Living In The Light, and fuses his pop, jazz, classical, and roots influences into a daring collection of intimate and cinematic storytelling. Tommy Emmanuel, Certified Guitar Player, plays and tells tales, rough edges and all, in our studio. Set list: 1. Black and White To Color 2. Little Georgia 3. Drowning Heart

The Barr Brothers, the indie-folk-rock band from Montreal, have just released their first album in eight years called Let It Hiss. Brad Barr, the band's singer, guitarist and songwriter is a versatile collaborator and risk-taker who revels in making unusual sounds. The latest songs can be folk-leaning, or may draw from the blues and American songwriting; they represent a reckoning with vulnerability, truth, with helpings of gratitude and humility. And while Andrew couldn't be here for this session, Brad Barr, along with Stuart Bogie on sax and clarinet and Shahzad Ismaily on bass play (and improvise a bit) on some songs from the new album, in-studio. Set list: 1. Naturally 2. Another Tangerine 3. Run Right Into It

The Portuguese singer and songwriter Carminho is one of the leading singers in the style known as fado – the deeply soulful, melancholy music that is somewhat akin to Spanish flamenco or American blues. She has collaborated with the iconic Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso, performed for the late Pope Francis, recorded with Steve Albini, and made a special appearance in the film Poor Things, by Yorgos Lanthimos, where she sings from a balcony accompanying herself on the teardrop-shaped Portuguese guitar. Carminho has a new album called Eu Vou Morrer de Amor ou Resistir – I'll die of love, or I'll resist.  Accompanied by classical guitar, Portuguese guitar, and acoustic bass guitar, she performs in-studio.Set list: 1. Canção à ausente 2. Saber 3. Lá vai Lisboa

The Mexican singer Silvana Estrada made an immediate impression with her debut LP Marchita back in 2022. Quickly hailed as a unique voice in Latin music for her blend of jazz, chamber music, and traditional folk, Estrada took her time making her follow-up album, and it appears to have been time well-spent: Vendrán Suaves Lluvias, or “there will come soft rains,” is a heartfelt, elegant, quietly melodic album full of songs about love, lost love, and what it takes to just keep on keeping on. Silvana Estrada performs some of these latest songs in intimate arrangements on cuatro, accompanied by musician Joe Grass on guitar and pedal steel, in-studio. Set list: 1. Dime 2. No Te Vayas Sin Saber 3. Good Luck, Good Night

The singer Meklit, born Meklit Hadero in Ethiopia, is based in the Bay Area, where she has released a number of albums that blend jazz, pop, and soul with the echoes of Ethiopian pop. Her latest album, A Piece of Infinity, finds Meklit singing mostly in Amharic, and looking back to what is sometimes called the Golden Age of Ethiopian music – the time in the early 70s when Latin music, American funk, and traditional Ethiopian scales and rhythms all came together. Meklit and her band perform some of these new songs, in-studio. 1. Ambassel 2. Tizita 3. Geefata

Canadian singer and composer Patrick Watson has been making records for almost a quarter century – with a cinematic blend of indie rock, cabaret pop, and chamber music that has made him a favorite of film directors and music supervisors.  His latest record, Uh Oh, is the result of a pretty big uh-oh moment for a singer: Watson lost his voice. He thought it was broken forever, and wrote a collection of songs and collaborations with other people - voices that he wanted to hear: among them the artists Charlotte Cardin, La Force, Martha Wainwright, and Klô Pelgag. Luckily, Watson managed to get his voice back;  he performs in-studio with his frequent collaborator, the singer/songwriter La Force.Set List: 1. Lonely Nights 2. Peter and the Wolf 3. House on Fire

American indie rock band The Antlers began almost 20 years ago as a solo project from singer and songwriter Peter Silberman. While the previous album, Green To Gold, was a pastoral, almost folky affair, the new album, Blight, is almost like a classical song cycle, and is a musical warning about nature under siege.  “The consequences of accelerating technology and environmental neglect feel imminent; that sense of urgency made me want to speak more candidly,” he explains (Transgressive Records). Silberman and longtime Antlers drummer Michael Lerner play some of these new songs, in-studio. Set list: 1. Consider the Source 2. Calamity 3. A Great Flood

GRAMMY-winning musical omnivore Sullivan Fortner merges New Orleans grit and spice with invention (and not just J.S. Bach), for an alchemical jazz that is wise, feisty, mischievous, and dynamic. His exposure to R&B, soul, and gospel at home; his time at Oberlin and the influence of various teachers in jazz and classical disciplines; and his longtime collaborator Cécile McLorin Salvant have all informed his approach to writing and playing, with an emphasis on PLAY. Fortner is the inaugural Bell Jazz Award Winner, and he performs tunes from early blues and jazz, a version of a Chopin waltz, and his own original music, in-studio. Set list: 1. Grandpa's Spells (Jelly Roll Morton) 2. It's A Game 3. Chopin's Valse Du Petit Chien

The Spanish-born singer, songwriter and producer Pablopablo recently released his debut LP, but he'd already built up an impressive array of writing and producing credits, winning Latin Grammys back in 2022 under his given name, Pablo Drexler. Those awards were for his work on a collaboration between his father, the popular Uruguayan-born musician Jorge Drexler, and the Spanish superstar C. Tangana. And collaboration is an important part of Pablopablo's music as well, as you'll hear on his record, Canciones En Mi. Pablopablo plays solo, and with guest musician Macario Martinez, in-studio.  Set list: 1. Todavia 2. Vida Nueva 3. Ojos de Ajonjoli

Christone "Kingfish" Ingram has been steeped in the Blues since he was eight years old, when he visited the Delta Blues Museum as a student in Clarksdale, Mississippi (Jackson Advocate). He played drums, bass, and GUITAR and was recognized at a young age for his exceptional musical talent with his debut album Kingfish, in 2019 on Alligator Records. Since then he's released two more albums, won a Grammy and a shelfful of Blues Music Awards, and he's still just 26. His raw and inspired guitar playing, soulful vocals and mature songwriting, bandleading, mentoring younger musicians, and starting his own record label have led Christone “Kingfish” Ingram to be “the face of a new generation of blues artists” (Fender). Christone "Kingfish" Ingram and his band play songs from the new album, called Hard Road, in-studio. Set list: 1. Voodoo Charm 2. Bad Like Me 3. Nothin' But Your Love 

“Shamstep” band, 47SOUL, take their name from the Arabic name for the Levant region – Bilad al-Sham, with members from Jordan, Washington DC, and Israel - spanning the divides of the Palestinian Diaspora. The music is a mix of dubstep, hip-hop and electro-Arabic dabke with lyrics in both Arabic and English, which are intensely political in their call for celebration and freedom in the struggle for equality. The quartet 47SOUL performs their smart dance music in-studio. (From the Archives, 2019.)Set list: 1. Don't care where you're from 2. Moved Around  3. Intro To Shamstep 

The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble is a musically free-ranging band of brothers from the south side of Chicago. Their music draws from funk, funky jazz, Afrobeat, hip hop, rock, reggae, and R&B, and they've performed with Tony Allen, Wu Tang Clan, De La Soul, Prince, Femi Kuti, Gorillaz, Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def), and the B52's, to name a few. Growing up, the members of HBE were raised with music as a constant, as they are the sons of the late jazz trumpeter Phil Cohran (Earth, Wind, and Fire, Sun Ra Arkestra). Now based between Brooklyn and Chicago, the full party of Hypnotic Brass Ensemble plays some tunes in-studio. (Archives, 2019)Set list:  1. Menage 2. War 3. ACF

Rumbo Tumba is the project of the Argentine musician Facundo Salgado, who uses a looping station and a battery of handmade, traditional South American instruments to create brilliant musical conversations between South American traditions and modern technology.  Rumbo Tumba can make an improbable amount of sound, live and alone, constructing sounds and atmospheres that transport listeners to the purest places in nature. Hear his live in-studio set for us and his explanation of how he makes all this music live. Rumbo Tumba plays in New York at Public Records on October 10.Set list: 1. Monte 2. Barro 3. Huguaju

From the 2025 New York Guitar Festival, hear music from legendary American jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and Icelandic bass player Skúli Sverrisson, who were about to go into the studio and record their second album as a duo. Part of the New Sounds Live concerts, the music was recorded at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn, and was a co-presentation of World Music Institute. Set list: 1. Sverrisson: Her Room 2. Sverrisson: Draumfari 3. Frisell: Baby 4. Sverrisson: Afternoon Variant

Cole Quest & The City Pickers are a bluegrass band from Brooklyn, and if that surprises you, well, the fact is New York City has had a long, strong bluegrass scene going back to the 1950's. Cole Quest draws on that tradition, and his own family tradition - he's the grandson of the folk icon Woody Guthrie – in originals and updated versions of Guthrie tunes. Cole Quest & The City Pickers shred with high-spirited energy and that high lonesome sound, in-studio. Set list: 1. Where I'm From 2. Early Morning Dew 3. I Ain't

The Soundcheck Podcast series offers up music from recent sessions, all revolving around The Blues –at the root of so much popular music, and where the roots have grown into other fruits worldwide. Listen to French-Moroccan band Bab L' Bluz and their hot psychedelic blues spiked with the Gnawa trance rhythms of northern Africa's Maghreb. There's the “Desert Blues” of West Africa in music by singer and guitarist Mdou Moctar from Niger. He and his band combine rock and psychedelia, call-and-response and accelerating threes, and fiery guitar playing for trancey and ecstatic results. Listen to Texas-raised singer, guitarist, and songwriter Ruthie Foster and her longtime bandmates who play some of their feel-good and hopeful blues. Hear the timeless sound of West Georgia Blues by singer and guitarist Jontavious Willis (along with the wicked tunings and his slide playing), in-studio. Plus, there's the groove and swagger of Yemen Blues, and their fusion of Moroccan trance, Arab and Bedouin folk, and Western funk and rock. The American singer-songwriter Fantastic Negrito plays some of his blues-stomp-and-roll music with roots in his family's past. Plus, hear the vintage soul and blues-rock sound of Memphis and Mississippi-rooted, Brooklyn native singer Bette Smith. Soundcheck Special, Sept. 2025 – “Blues Is the Roots” (First aired 9/20/25)ARTIST: Marco BeneventoWORK: Eagle Rock [1:02]RECORDING: TigerFaceSOURCE: Royal Potato FamilyINFO: https://marcobenevento.bandcamp.com/album/tigerfaceARTIST: Jontavious WillisWORK: Ghost Woman [5:52]RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, Nov. 2024SOURCE: This performance not commercially availableINFO: https://jontaviouswillis.comARTIST: Fantastic NegritoWORK: Son of a Broken Man [5:02]RECORDING: Live on Soundcheck, Oct. 2024SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.INFO: https://www.fantasticnegrito.com/ARTIST: Ruthie FosterWORK: Phenomenal Woman [7:00]RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, March 2023SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.INFO: https://www.ruthiefoster.com/ARTIST: Mdou MoctarWORK: Imouhar [6:18]RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, June 2024SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.INFO: https://www.mdoumoctar.com/ARTIST: Bab L' BluzWORK: Imazighen [4:15]RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, April 2025SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.INFO: https://www.bablbluz.com/ARTIST: Yemen BluesWORK: Allenby [5:26]RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, Sept. 2024SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.INFO: https://yemenblues.com/ARTIST: Bette SmithWORK: Darkest Hour [3:35]RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, Aug. 2024SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.INFO: https://www.bettesmith.com

Canada's Ron Sexsmith is a songwriter whose fans include Elvis Costello, Elton John, Paul McCartney, and a few other folks who know a thing or two about that mysterious process. Sexsmith is now forty years into his career, with 18 albums, three of Canada's Juno Awards, and a novel to show for it. His latest album is called Hangover Terrace, and it ranges from aching ballads to the tongue-in-cheek advice for living. Ron Sexsmith plays solo, in-studio.Set list: 1. Cigarette and Cocktail 2. Rose Town 3. Gold In Them Hills

Distinctive songwriter Cass McCombs takes a broad view of the American experience – from the mundane to the mythic. His new songs from a wide-ranging double album -  Interior Live Oak contain “specific detail amid strange painterly settings” (The Guardian) and remain hopeful despite the feeling of listening to someone who has lived the extreme aspects of modern life. Cass McCombs plays a stripped-down set, in-studio.Set List: 1. Missionary Bell 2. Home At Last 3. Peace

Pianist and composer Omar Sosa draws on his own Afro-Cuban heritage, American jazz, and spiritual and meditative practices from around the world to create music that defies categorization. He's traveled widely, especially in Africa, recording the sounds of the people, the animals, and the instruments of those places and sometimes incorporating them into his own works. Sosa, along with the Cuban-born, New York-based sax player Yosvany Terry, and drummer Julian Miltenberger, play new music, in-studio. Set list: 1. Bola 2. My Three Notes (Mis Tres Notas) 3. Muevete en D

“Failed bull-rider turned seminal songwriter” (Red Light Management), native Texan Rodney Crowell is considered to be one of the chief architects of Americana music, and a songwriter admired by good songwriters. Crowell has had an eventful career in his half century of writing songs, making records and helping create the style that's come to be known as alternative country. He's worked with a who's who of American music:  Emmylou Harris at first, and then much later as well, but also Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow – the list is too long to go into. Rodney Crowell is back with a new album called "Airline Highway" featuring many top-notch collaborations. He plays a solo set, in-studio.Set list: 1. Rainy Days in California 2. The Twenty-One Song Salute (Owed to G.G. Shinn and Cléoma Falcon) 3. Taking Flight

From the 2025 New York Guitar Festival, listen to a live set by the adventurous guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson along with drummer/composer Tomas Fujiwara, playing their original works. This show was recorded at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn, as part of the New Sounds Live concert series, and was also a co-presentation of World Music Institute.  Set list: 1. Fujiwara: June   2. Fujiwara: Nudgestorms   3. Halvorson: Folded Secret  4. Frisell: Untitled

Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen and his trio, featuring new bassist Sigurd Hole and long-time collaborator, drummer Jarle Vespestad, combine together folk influences and church music for unhurried embraces of melody. Expressive and reflective, Gustavsen's ‘Nordic blues' slowly unfurls passages of delicate lyricism, with enough space for contemplation, and only the notes that are needed from all players in the trio.On the 2018 release, The Other Side, the trio effortlessly injects old Norwegian lullabies and dance forms into original works, and develops haunting and riveting responses to both Scandinavian hymns and Bach Chorales. The Tord Gustavsen Trio joins us to play some of these compositions in-studio. (From the Archives, 2018) - Caryn HavlikSet List: 1. The Tunnel 2. O Traurigkeit 3.Schlafes Bruder

Adrian Quesada is probably best known as one of the two co-founders of the psychedelic soul band Black Pumas, but the guitarist and producer has also been part of Grupo Fantasma, Brownout and Ocote Soul Sounds.  Lately, he's also been pursuing another musical project called  Boleros Psicodélicos, an homage to the phenomenon of balada music that blossomed throughout Latin America between the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Balada is “a refined collision of bossa nova smoothness, Beatlesque psychedelia and torrid boleropathos” which “used art-pop instrumentation (mostly strings and harpsichords)”, and “employed songs about heartbreak and longing as a means to transport the listener to an opulent, cinematic fantasy world”, (Bandcamp). Quesada has recently released the second volume of these modern takes on vintage Latin pop sounds, all featuring some of the leading voices in modern Latin alternative music. Quesada, his band, and guest artists -L.A. singer and producer Angélica Garcia, Grammy-winning Puerto Rican singer-songwriter iLe (Ileana Cabra), and violinist and vocalist Mireya Ramos (of the all-female Mariachi band Flor de Toloache) – all perform in-studio. Set list: 1. Tus Tormentas with Mireya Ramos 2. No Juego with Angelica Garcia 3. Mentiras con Cariño with iLe 

The New York-based singer, songwriter, and producer Anand Wilder was a cofounder of the experimental indie band Yeasayer, and more recently has pursued a wide-ranging solo career.  His 2022 solo debut, I Don't Know My Words, was a genuine solo project, with Anand playing everything himself. Now, though, Anand Wilder has a new record called Psychic Lessons, and it is very much a collaboration with two other musician/producers, Walter Fancourt and Jachary, both of whom join him to play new songs, in-studio. Set List: 1. Appointment in Samarra 2. Selkie Bride 3. Molly's Song 4. Bog People

The singer Elisapie is an Inuk musician, filmmaker, advocate, and writer who has become a nationally-celebrated figure in Canada – her portrait appears on a postage stamp in that country's Indigenous leaders series. Her latest album, Inuktitut, is notable for a couple of reasons: first, it's sung in the language called Inuktitut, and second, it is an album of reworked songs by Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and more. Elisapie, in looking back to the songs of her youth, celebrates the resilience and joy of the Inuit people and the spirit of connection. She and her band play in-studio. Set list: 1. Uummati Attanarsimat (Heart of Glass) 2. Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven) 3. Arnaq

Named after being mis-identified while returning a uHaul, the pop'n'roll band We Are Scientists has been making melancholic, nostalgic, and melodic songs, familiar and fun, for some 20 years. Since their debut album With Love And Squalor, they've wandered into the worlds of comedy and English soccer while continuing their own spin on indie rock with and without synths. Keith Murray and Chris Cain, on their latest, Qualifying Miles, return to a more direct, "band in a room" sound, reminiscent of the '90s guitar rock heroes of their youth with pedal boards aplenty and rock waltzes. We Are Scientists, with touring drummer, Keith Carne, plays in-studio. Set list: 1. Please Don't Say It 2. Dead Letters 3. What You Want Is Gone

Eleanor Friedberger, best known as one half of the indie rock duo The Fiery Furnaces, has recently shifted her musical landscape, swapping out live instruments in favor of drum programming and synths for a sound that she can create mostly on her own. (Part of her desire to be more self-reliant, in the wake of the 2016 election.) On her 2018 record, Rebound, she channels the sound and energy of an experience at a very smoky 80's goth disco in Athens where they do a “chicken dance.” Lyrical inspiration came to Friedberger from a biography about the poet Edna St Vincent Millay. Eleanor Friedberger brings these dark and smoky, yet groovy and poetic tunes to perform in-studio. (From the Archives)

The duo of Rachael & Vilray turns the idea of "Everything old is new again" on its head – making new things that sound really old. Over the course of three albums they offer a contemporary take on tin pan alley, the great American songbook, and vintage small combo jazz.  The duo's latest album is West of Broadway and it brings Rachael & Vilray back to our studio to play some of these new and knowing songs. Set list: 1. Forever Never Lasts 2. Is It Jim? 3. My Key to Gramercy Park 

New York based composer Cassie Wieland first unveiled her ambient songwriting project she calls Vines in 2023. Now she's released a full LP under the name Vines – that record, called I'll be here, is full of atmospheric, textural washes of sound and processed vocals that suggest a story rather than actually telling you one. The live version of Vines includes an unusually-constructed ensemble: Wieland on keyboards, synths, vocoder, and vocals, Adam Holmes on a Sensory Percussion Kit, and Adrianne Munden-Dixon on violin. Vines plays some of these inviting, cinematic song-scapes, in-studio.Set list: 1. Evicted 2. Tired 3. I am my home

Indianapolis-based group 81355 (pronounced ‘bless') is a collaboration between the rapper/singers Oreo Jones and Sirius Blvck, and the lyricist/producer Sedcairn, and while they're clearly rooted in hip hop, they're not bound by it. On their impressive new album Bad Dogs, the band races through electropop, future soul, grunge, and avant-garde boom-bap, all the while designing a hazy and heavy Afrofuturist take on a live band augmented by electronics - supported by members of their "Naptown" underground music community. They play music from their latest, 'Bad Dogs', in-studio for the #SoundcheckPodcast.Set list: 1. Heart of Stone 2. Guitar 3. Capstone