Bob Boilen

Decades ago, the potent folk songs of Cat Stevens inspired All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen to pick up acoustic guitar. Now known as Yusuf/Cat Stevens, the singer visits the All Songs studio for this week's show to discuss his path to music and share songs that inspired him ...

The loudest guy in the world came to the Tiny Desk to perform some of his quietest music. Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis, for years a guy who's turned my ears red, showed up armed with just an acoustic guitar. I even had an amp for that guitar all ...

Earlier this month, All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland to attend the annual Iceland Airwaves music festival. Kevin Cole and the crew from NPR member station KEXP were there to broadcast and record bands at the festival. The lineup included bands from around the ...

This week, Foo Fighters releases its latest project, Sonic Highways. Why "project" rather than album? Sonic Highways is more than just eight new songs. It's also an eight-part documentary currently running on HBO. Together, the album and film series look at the intersection of geography and music. It's what ...

Imagine an evening where you just around with your closest friends or family, and all you do is play music for each other. No TV or video games. No texting. Just a bunch of songs and some great conversations about what you love, or don't love and why.

It's kind ...

When it came out in February, I told friends that the Angel Olsen album Burn Your Fire For No Witness was my favorite of the year so far. Now, here in late October, my love for that record has only grown deeper. The songs are sullen at times, on ...

The folk duo Luluc's first album for Sub Pop was co-produced by the National's Aaron Dessner and will be released on July 15. More on this artist from the band's website.

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Every fall, hundreds of bands migrate to New York City for the annual CMJ Music Marathon. Many of these groups are playing their first shows in NYC and for a lot of the audience — music journalists, college dj's and fans alike — it's their first taste of these young ...

Oh my god, they look so young! It was 1981 when this little Athens, Ga. based band started making a splash. Over the years that followed they made waves. This small trailer for a larger documentary about R.E.M. is a beautiful peek at innocence, youth, the '80s and MTV. The ...

Oh my god, they look so young! It was 1981 when this little Athens, Ga. based band started making a splash. Over the years that followed they made waves. This small trailer for a larger documentary about R.E.M. is a beautiful peek at innocence, youth, the '80s and MTV. The ...

Anthony D'Amato sings and writes in the tradition of Bruce Springsteen or Josh Ritter: His songs sound friendly musically, but they also tackle the difficult and the twisted. Like those great songwriters, D'Amato's work is universal without devolving into moping. There's also a spirit to these songs, ...

I see a lot of good-looking animations with music, but this one stopped me cold. The video is stunning — funny, odd and quirky, but with a sense of purpose. Rocks and totem poles sing, as do strands of DNA and a cereal box. The animation is mixed with surreal ...

Sometimes it helps to know where an artist is from. Geography can define a sound, but while Daniel Lanois is from Ontario, he might as well hail from Saturn. His new album, Flesh And Machine, defies categorization; it has no songs and no words, with voices used only to ...

When he was 20, Ásgeir Trausti Einarsson released an album in Iceland, sung in Icelandic, with many of the words written by his father. Dýrð í dauðaþögn became the biggest-selling debut in Icelandic music history. A year or so later, he rerecorded that album in English under the name ...

The Bots' members are brothers and bandmates whose playful, catchy songs rock hard. Singer-guitarist Mikaiah Lei is 21 and drummer Anaiah Lei is 17; they made their first album when they were 15 and 12, respectively. Pink Palms is their newest and best.

I hear Jimi Hendrix in ...

There's a climactic passage, near the end of Gregory Alan Isakov's "Amsterdam," that's punctuated by a moment in a glorious piece of stop-motion animation by Laura Goldhamer. I won't spoil it with description, but I understand how it took her a month and a half to create it. Here are ...

Robert Plant was just brilliant in Brooklyn on Sept. 28. Plant and his Sensational Space Shifters played a stunning set of music that did what Robert Plant does best: mixing up American blues, British rock, North African rhythms and even some electronica with that voice, still filled with ...

My admiration for Jackson Browne began with his first album in 1971. I was wowed by the fact that the singer-songwriter had worked with Nico of Velvet Underground fame — his girlfriend at the time — on her first album, Chelsea Girl. He wrote one of my favorite songs ...

My favorite song from tUnE-yArDs 2014 release Nikki Nack has gotten a wacky, cartoony visual treatment.

Merrill Garbus, the uke-looping, drum-beating, vibrant singer behind tUnE-yArDs, says that "Real Thing" was the one song on the album that she didn't actually want to make into a video. "It has too many ...

Earlier this year I heard a voice like no other. In fact, when I heard the song "Different Pulses," I was sure it was a woman. I imagined someone like Janis Joplin. But the singer, the young Israeli Asaf Avidan, is the man in the photo above. He's ...