Bob Boilen

If you've not heard of Benjamin Booker yet, get ready. He's a fiery 22-year-old guitar player from New Orleans about to hit the road with Jack White. This tune, "Have You Seen My Son," is about evangelical father praying for his son's soul. The video, directed by Rick Alverson, was ...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is expected to announce on Monday that he is ordering 1,000 National Guard troops to the U.S. border with Mexico, according to reports from The Monitor and The Houston Chronicle.

The Monitor, a south Texas newspaper, reports that it received a memo that outlined ...

Fantasize your ideal love. With that in mind, write the most gentle, serene love song. I imagine that Hollie Fullbrook, a.k.a. Tiny Ruins, did that here. The song, "Me At The Museum, You In The Wintergardens," is on a lovely album by Tiny Ruins called Brightly Painted One, and the ...

This slow-building love story is sketched out with tender falsetto touched by electronics and guitar. Novo Amor is the moniker of Welsh singer Ali Lacey; Ed Tullett is an English electronic artist. "Faux" by Novo Amor & Ed Tullett is for sale here.

Truth be told, Holly Williams brought me and many of my hardened colleagues to tears. The singer-songwriter has a magnificent way with words and phrasing, not to mention a country-music lineage that fills her with pride and guides her poignancy and subject matter.

Country is in her blood: As ...

The Apache Relay's "Katie Queen of Tennessee" is easily one of the catchiest tunes I've heard this year. And in the song's new video, a troupe of 40 young dancers raise the fun to heights I hadn't imagined with a blissfully, perfectly choreographed routine.

Then I discovered this: These kids, ...

The Brooklyn band The Antlers frequently finds inspiration in dark places: On 2009's Hospice, singer-guitarist Peter Silberman reflects on terminal illness and emotional abuse, while this year's Familiars turns the Buddhist notion of bardo, a state of being between incarnations, into the impetus for a dialog about multiple selves.

John Grant's songs don't mess around: The music isn't complicated, while the lyrics function as darts of retort and thought. His album Pale Green Ghosts is decorated with synthesizers, his voice often drenched in reverb; those tools and textures help make the record strong and everlasting.

So when Grant came ...

The latest video from Pattern Is Movement is up close and personal, featuring the best music this Philadelphia duo has made in 14 years of recording together. Watch Andrew Thiboldeaux and Chris Ward perform "Suckling," with just drums, keyboards and voice. The cut is from the band's self-titled album, released ...

Bad acting meets good music in this collaboration between former Pixies bassist Kim Deal and Morgan Nagler, aka Whispertown. The new video for their single, "Range On Castle," includes classic footage from the 1963 Roger Corman film The Terror, starring Boris Karloff and a very young Jack Nicholson.

This song ...

Nicole Atkins is a dreamer, though sometimes those dreams are a bit nightmarish. Take "Who Killed the Moonlight?" the song that opens her third and most adventurous album, Slow Phaser. She recorded the album in Sweden with producer Tore Johannson, whose work with The Cardigans or perhaps

Steve Gunn's Time Off was one of 2013's most unfairly overlooked records. The guitarist blends the traditional and the avant-garde, fusing the sounds of John Fahey, The Grateful Dead and Will Oldham into back-porch masterpieces. Time Off is the kind of album that can suck the energy out of any ...

Since winning the Icelandic Music Award for best album of the year in his home country a few years ago, Ásgeir Trausti — best known simply as Ásgeir — has begun to win over larger parts of the world, including the U.S. He has a calm upper range voice, a ...

Sometimes music and life intersect in ways beyond words. Filmmaker James Marcus Haney set out to do two things, make a music video for the British trio Bear's Den and capture the last days of his little brothers carefree college days with friends.

What he wound up with is tragic ...

People ask me all the time to name my favorite Tiny Desk Concert. It's my desk and I've seen almost all of the nearly 400 concerts up close. So you'd think this would be easy. Moon Hooch have made it a lot easier.

Up there with the ear-shaking voice of ...

It seems the unlikeliest of collaborations: Cat Power, a American songwriter and singer who can be quiet and somewhat insular, and Coldplay, now a veteran band from London that is immensely popular, confident and bold. And still, what happens in this recording, the title track for ...

We know that music is important to Zach Braff. The soundtrack to his last film, Garden State, was integral to the story and introduced many to bands like The Shins. While working on his new film, Wish I Was Here, he asked a number of musicians to write ...

On Monday at noon we're premiering a brand-new song from an artist we love. Until then, we're leaving you this puzzle to ponder: Who is Monday's Mystery Musician?

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.