Bob Boilen

I'm happy to have new music from the harmonious and ethereal band Quilt. The Boston quartet's 2014 album, Held in Splendor, is a favorite of mine. Their third album, Plaza, is coming on Feb. 26, and this first new song "Eliot St.," is a pleasant extension of the band's sound.

Imagine creating the best work of your life, some of the best music of its day, and no one cares. Now imagine playing those songs 47 years later to a screaming and loving bunch of fans and getting what seems like a hero's welcome. That's part of the story of ...

What is it like to sing songs almost 50 years after first writing and recording them? How does it feel to make your most creative work only to have it ignored? I wondered about these questions when I went and talked with Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone, two of the ...

After tricking hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton into abandoning the studio in search of the world's most complicated latte, Los Angeles folk duo The Milk Carton Kids commandeer the mic and take over this week's show. Singers and guitarists Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan have released four ...

Martin Atkins, a drummer, producer and professor, weaves the terrifying tale of any musicians' personal horror in this spooky Halloween installment of The Martin Atkins Minute, an occasional series in our All Songs +1 podcast.

This week, Atkins is trapped inside a nightmare that has claimed the lives ...

I have found myself watching and re-watching this video over and over since I first saw it. It takes a simple idea — a story that unfolds via paper cut with an X-Acto knife and backlit to create intricate and stunning silhouettes — and shapes it into something that honestly ...

It was a moment of television magic. I heard a brand new song from my favorite band and saw them on film, walking around and riding horses. If the expression "my mind was blown" had been created, I'd have phoned up my friends and told them that. All I can ...

Le Volume Courbe is the music of Charlotte Marionneau and her friends. On her second album those friends include names you'll know, like Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine, and names you'll want to know, like Melanie Draisey, Chris Mackin, Lascelle Gordon and more.

It's been ten years since the ...

The first time I saw 10-piece Houston big band The Suffers, it was at a small venue in Washington, D.C., called DC9. The club was barely big enough to contain all the horns, guitars and percussion, not to mention the undeniable force of the music.

At first, I couldn't ...

This week on All Songs Considered, Weezer is back with an insanely catchy new single that takes on everything from sexism to religion, filtered through Rivers Cuomo's playful sense of humor. Marlon Williams puts his choir boy-meets-punk rocker touch on country music, King Gizzard ...

Listen to this conversation and you'll feel like you're sitting in an airport lounge eavesdropping on two smart, funny, mutually-admiring musicians.

Neko Case and John Grant have been friends on social media for a few years — a recent Twitter exchange began with Neko ...

It's been almost five years since the last new Adele album. Today we have a new video from Adele — it's the opening song from 25, which will come out Nov. 20. With her third album, probably the last in a trilogy of albums with an age in the title, ...

I got an intriguing email recently from an artist I've followed for the past few years. Anthony D'Amato was excited about a demo he'd recorded, and he wanted to get it out into the world. D'Amato had recently broken his finger — which, for a guitar player, is a ...

On this week's All Songs Considered, Robin starts the show with a question: What bands have you discovered and fallen in love with from commercials? His first pick, Chairlift, has come a long way since its 2008 ad for the Apple iPod Nano. Bob's first pick, ...

There's a lot of mediocrity to sort through when you hop from one club to another during a festival like the CMJ Music Marathon, five days during which bands flock to New York. So when I find stuff that stands out, that pushes the inevitable evolutionary boundaries of rock, I ...

I've seen Oh Pep! four times in three cities in the past month, and needless to say, the Melbourne band's music is infectious. Oh Pep gets its Oh from Olivia Hally (vocals, guitar) and its Pep! from Pepita Emmerichs (violin, mandolin). These Australians fit well in Nashville during an Americana ...

The way we listen to music evolves constantly. From wax cylinder recordings all the way through to today's streaming services, formats have come a long way. What's next? What does this unending metamorphosis say about the music industry? And what does any of this have to do with Robert De ...

On this week's All Songs Considered, Bob Boilen is getting excited for the CMJ Music Marathon in New York and Robin Hilton is just plain getting excited. Bob shares some of the things he's most eager to hear at the festival, like Georgia's one-woman musical melee and two ...

My rule when booking Tiny Desk Concerts is to see artists live before they come to the office. I've heard many a great record only to be disappointed by a live show. But when I heard Andra Day sing "Forever Mine" from her album Cheers To The Fall, I ...

This week on All Songs Considered, Bob Boilen and Robin share a few of their favorite things: choice tunes from cherished artists. We've got all the bases covered, from a devastating song about dementia from Daughter to an energetic anthem from Frank Turner on the power of ...