Jacob Ganz

Whether you use it as a balm or an echo chamber for your despair, Ware's second album is a celebration of gloriously messy feelings, each tamed by her soft touch.

After two solid albums, Too Bright is something shockingly new for Perfume Genius: a set of muscular, magnificently controlled songs that explore darkness inside and out.

Highly emotional rock that reads as low-stakes at first, Lost in the Dream is evocative and pleasant if you let it float by in the background. But it's made with hooks that sink in deep.

The cello ensemble plays all 20 of the songs written and published as sheet music — but not recorded — by Beck.

Hear two different versions of one song, "Death of a Party," from Blur's career-spanning box set.

A huge appetite for drugs, a U.F.O. cult, great songs — just a few parts of the Tim Maia story.

A trick of light made the rapper, who has been dead for more than 15 years, the most talked about musician after the first weekend of this year's Coachella festival.

In rock and roll terms, the Portland-based band is a veteran act. When they started playing together 17 years ago, they had no idea the gig would last. Now, Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss have put out their eighth album, called American Gong.

In 1989, two members of the rock band Superchunk launched a tiny record label. Twenty years later, amid the struggles of the music industry at large, Merge has become one of the most respected and successful companies in the business.