Hurray for the Riff Raff performed several songs from their new album, LIFE ON EARTH, at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, last month as part of NPR Music’s 15th anniversary celebrations. You can watch the set here. LIFE ON EARTH made NPR Music’s list of The 10 Best Rock Albums of 2022 and NPR Music’s Ann Powers list of The 20 Best Albums of 2022. "LIFE ON EARTH sounds like what Segarra describes as ‘nature punk,'" Powers writes, "cosmic in feel, anthemic in reach."

The Black Keys have announced initial details of the European leg of their Dropout Boogie Tour starting in June. Following shows in Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the band will be joined by special guests Spoon for concerts in Paris, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Cologne, and Hamburg. The Black Keys will play festival sets in Italy, Portugal, and Spain in July. Pre-sale tickets for the June dates will be open to the band’s fan club, The Lonely Boys & Girls Club, on December 13; general on-sale begins December 16. This marks The Black Keys’ first European tour since 2015. 

Cécile McLorin Salvant performs "Moon Song"—from her Grammy-nominated Nonesuch debut album, Ghost Song—in a new video recorded during her two-night engagement at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center this past spring. The video features Salvant along with pianist Sullivan Fortner, percussionist Keita Ogawa, guitarist Marvin Sewell, flutist Alexa Tarantino, and bassist Yasushi Nakamura, all of whom are on the album. You can watch it here.

Rhiannon Giddens will tour the UK this spring, joined by multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. The tour starts in Aberdeen on April 27, with shows in Edinburgh, Gateshead, Perth, London, Norwich, Birmingham, and Essex. They follow the last two concerts of Giddens' Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall and bookend the Boston Lyric Opera run of Omar, her opera with Michael Abels, in May. They precede the 2023 Ojai Festival, of which she is Music Director, in June, and a trip to Italy for festival sets in Spoleto and Umbria in July.

The first recording of Steve Reich’s Runner and Music for Ensemble and Orchestra, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted by Susanna Mälkki, released on CD and digitally on Nonesuch Records in September, is now available on vinyl. The New York Times calls Runner "a calmly luminous orchestral piece with the pulsating, propulsive rhythms that animate much of Mr. Reich’s music." The San Francisco Chronicle says that Music for Ensemble and Orchestra "is a beautiful and dramatically charged masterpiece, but its impact goes even further than that."

A digital deluxe version of acclaimed singer, songwriter and musician Molly Tuttle’s Grammy-nominated album with her band Golden Highway, Crooked Tree, is out today on Nonesuch. Alongside the original thirteen songs, the deluxe edition features new renditions of the Grateful Dead’s “Dire Wolf,” and the traditional folk song “Cold Rain and Snow,” also made famous by the Grateful Dead, as well as live versions of album tracks “Dooley’s Farm” (feat. special guest Jerry Douglas) and “Castilleja,” both recorded at Nashville’s historic Station Inn. To celebrate the deluxe release, Tuttle has shared a new video for album track “Nashville Mess Around," which can be seen here.

Rachael & Vilray have released an animated video for their song “Just Me This Year,” which speaks to the pleasures of spending the winter holidays alone after a welcomed romantic breakup. The track, released earlier this fall, appears on their forthcoming album I Love a Love Song! out January 13. You can watch the video, directed by Mertcan Mertbilek, here.

The Staves' debut album, Dead & Born & Grown, turned ten in November, and to mark the occasion, Nonesuch Records releases the album on 180-gram recycled colored vinyl in the US today. This follows its UK release in October. Produced with Glyn and Ethan Johns (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones), Dead & Born & Grown was met with great critical acclaim and set the Staveley-Taylor sisters on the way to becoming one of the UK’s most celebrated indie exports. The recycled vinyl is made from 100% PVC recycled material, using waste material and clippings from previous record pressings, resulting in a unique color combination for each LP.

Brad Mehldau’s Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles is due February 10 on Nonesuch. The live solo album features interpretations of nine songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and one by George Harrison. Although other Beatles songs have long been staples of Mehldau’s shows, he had not previously recorded any of these tunes. The album, recorded in September 2020 at Philharmonie de Paris, ends with a David Bowie classic that draws a connection between The Beatles and pop songwriters who followed. A live performance video of the title track, recorded at the Village Vanguard in NYC, may be seen here.

Tom Skinner performs “Bishara,” from his just-released album, Voices of Bishara, in a new video filmed at St. Luke’s Church in West Holloway, London, in September. The performance features Skinner on drums and percussion, Tom Herbert on acoustic bass, Kareem Dayes on cello, Chelsea Carmichael and Robert Stillman on tenor saxophone, and Paul Camo on samples. You can watch it here.

Keep Your Courage, Natalie Merchant’s tenth solo studio album and the first of new material since her 2014 self-titled record, is due April 14. An eclectic album, produced by Merchant, it features lush orchestrations throughout, two duets sung with vocalist Abena Koomson-Davis of Resistance Revival Chorus, contributions from the Celtic folk group Lúnasa and Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, and horn arrangements by jazz trombonist Steve Davis. There are nine original songs by Merchant and an interpretation of a song by Ian Lynch of the Irish band Lankum. The vinyl LP edition includes four bonus tracks from earlier albums, previously unreleased on vinyl. Merchant will tour the US in the spring and fall. 

Vagabon will join Weyes Blood on tour in March and April 2023. The shows kick off at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee on March 13, followed by stops in Minneapolis, Des Moines, Englewood, Salt Lake City, Boise, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Phoenix, Santa Fe, Austin, and Dallas, culminating at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa on April 2.