Search results for

In "Osama Rach," the late Kenyan singer Otieno Jagwasi confesses an obsession with Osama bin Laden. "I am asking President Bush and Osama, 'Why do you have to kill innocent people when you just want to kill each other?'"

Beirut's Zach Condon is only 19, but his music brings to mind sights and sounds from older eras in other places. Created without guitars, Beirut's Gulag Orkestar instead incorporates an orchestra full of mandolins, ukuleles, violins and glockenspiels.

Matthew Herbert employs the dripping sounds of petrol pumps to ignite "We're in Love," a subversive lament for the end of the oil age. The song is distinguished by sweeping strings, a gentle piano melody, dreamy horns and Dani Sicilliano's winsome voice.

If Herbie Hancock, Kraftwerk and Alan Lomax embarked on a field-recording expedition in Senegal, their collaboration might resemble Flügelschlag!'s exhilarating "Mendiani." The song's bluesy phrasing and unpredictable group interaction fit somewhere between hard-bop and early jazz-funk.

NPR's Miles Parks speaks to Luisa Beck, a reporter in Berlin, about her new podcast, Dear Poetry.

Rahim not only draws inspiration from a specific sound — think Fugazi, The Dismemberment Plan, and other bands that add an element of adventurousness to rock and hardcore punk — but it also expands on those acts' exploratory sensibilities.

Already the subject of considerable overseas hype, Gnarls Barkley finds DJ/producer Danger Mouse collaborating with Cee-Lo, co-founder of the Atlanta hip-hop collective Goodie Mob. The duo's debut single, "Crazy," is music for an integrated world.

Maritime has a sweetly buzzing collection of ingratiating power-pop. Springtime anthems don't get much catchier than "Tearing Up the Oxygen," a wonderfully sunny gem propelled by bleeping synths and "ah-ah" choruses.

The unmistakable voice of Roberta Flack has been part of the American soundtrack since the 1960s.

Over an airy but energetic pulse, Manu Katché's group outlines a simple four-bar theme a child might write. But the skeletal idea becomes a song that isn't cramped by jazz convention.