Punch Brothers and I'm With Her (Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O'Donovan) join forces this summer for the American Acoustic US tour, starting at the State Theatre in Portland, Maine, Saturday, with dates at the Newport Folk Festival, Wolf Trap, NYC's Beacon Theatre, and more. Guitarist Julian Lage joins the bands, which will play a mix of featured sets and collaborations, as a special guest. Watch a video of Chris Thile explaining how it will all work here.

Dark Matter, Randy Newman's first album of new material in nine years, is due next Friday, August 4, with the vinyl due August 18. But you don't need to wait till then to hear it: the album is streaming in full below as an NPR First Listen. Newman, says NPR, "remains first and foremost a craftsman of song, capable of telling ordinary stories in ways no one quite has before."

Fleet Foxes begin a North American tour featuring music from their new album, Crack-Up, with a show at Thompson’s Point in Portland, Maine, tonight. The tour includes headline dates at Celebrate Brooklyn, Hollywood Bowl, and Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and across the continent in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Toronto, Detroit, Las Vegas, Austin, Vancouver, Seattle, San Diego, Phoenix, St. Paul, and more, plus festival sets at Newport Folk and Outside Lands, culminating with two nights at the Chicago Theatre in early October.

Audra McDonald—who is starring in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill on London's West End—spoke with Alec Baldwin about her life and storied career as the guest on the latest episode of his Here's the Thing podcast from WNYC Studios. "Much like the staggering beauty of her voice, Audra McDonald is impossible to ignore," says Baldwin. "Reviews of her award-winning performances overflow with accolades: she's 'spellbinding,' 'radiant,' and 'wrenchingly human.'" Hear the conversation here.

The Magnetic Fields will bring their 50 Song Memoir tour to Arts Centre Melbourne's Hamer Hall on October 21 and 22 as part of the Melbourne Festival in the exclusive Australian presentation of the show. The Melbourne performances follow a US tour earlier this year and a tour of the UK and Ireland taking place later this summer.

Randy Newman was the guest on WTF with Marc Maron. "I can't tell you what an honor it was for me to have him in here, because I love him, I love his work," says Maron. "Randy Newman, one of my heroes ... He's got a new record out, called Dark Matter, which is great. It's like a real Randy Newman record from back in the day ... He is a great satirist, a very bright guy, sharp. I loved talking to him."

NPR Music has published a list titled Turning the Tables: The 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women, and among them are Emmylou Harris's Wrecking Ball, Laurie Anderson's Big Science, k.d. lang's Ingénue, and the Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir's Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. "This list, of the greatest albums made by women between 1964 and the present, is an intervention, a remedy, a correction of the historical record and hopefully the start of a new conversation," says NPR.

Randy Newman has just unveiled the video for the song "Sonny Boy," from his forthcoming album, Dark Matter. The video features illustrations by Roger Miller with animation by John Erickson. You can watch it here. The song is available to download now with pre-orders of Dark Matter, along with the previously released album track "Putin." Newman has announced several new US tour dates through the fall.

Devendra Banhart was on BBC 6 Music's Lauren Laverne show today, ahead of his concert at Hackney Empire in London tonight. He spoke with guest host Nemone about his new album, Ape in Pink Marble, among other things, and performed two songs from the record live: "Middle Names" and "Themes for a Taiwanese Woman in Lime Green." You can listen to the full session and watch the performance of "Middle Names" here.

k.d. lang, whose Ingénue: 25th Anniversary Edition two-CD set was released last week (with vinyl due August 18), further celebrates the Grammy and Juno Award–winning album's silver anniversary with the Ingénue Redux Tour, beginning with three shows in Melbourne, Australia, this week. The tour continues with shows in Perth and Sydney next week, followed by concerts across the singer’s home country of Canada, stopping in all ten provinces, in August and September.

Offa Rex, the new project from Olivia Chaney and The Decemberists, released its debut album, The Queen of Hearts, on Friday. Chaney was on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday yesterday to discuss the project, the origins of which can be traced to a tweet from The Decemberists' Colin Meloy. You can listen to the interview and even hear Chaney give an impromptu a cappella performance of an old Jewish hymn here. Chaney and Meloy will be on BBC Radio 2's The Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe on Wednesday.

Fleet Foxes were the guests on NPR's World Cafe on Friday. Host Talia Schlanger says the band's new album, Crack-Up, is "a lush and dense album with the harmonies and folky feel you expect from Fleet Foxes and a structure that's pretty unexpected." She spoke with Robin Pecknold about the album, and the band performed several songs from the album live. Find out what Pecknold had to say and hear the performances here.