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Alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, son of Indian immigrants, says he didn't think about his ethnic identity growing up. But on his new album Kinsmen, he and other like-minded South Asian American jazz musicians, fuse American jazz with a global sound that embraces the music of India.

George Tillman Jr.'s sketch of the life and death of the Notorious B.I.G. looks at how the Brooklyn rapper changed hip-hop. Corey Takahashi takes a look back at the man who would become Biggie Smalls.

Animal Collective is an experimental pop band that's cultivated an air of mystery over the past few years, as well as a passionate following. Will Hermes reviews the band's new album, Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Jeb Loy Nichols has recorded a half-dozen albums since the late 1990s and before that, fronted the band The Fellow Travelers. Rock critic Ken Tucker says Nichols' new album, called Parish Bar, coheres as one of his more adventurous musical experiments.

News from Somalia usually involves violent warlords or pirates hijacking ships off the coast. Other than that, average Somalis don't have much of a voice. The rapper K'Naan is trying to change that, and in the world of hip-hop, he's become an artist to watch.

Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of the rock band Weezer, has released a solo set of at-home demos called Alone and Alone II.

The band Fiction Family may be new, but its members are old hands at the music business. Jon Foreman of Switchfoot and Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek collaborated on the new album. Ken Tucker has a review.

On her latest recording, Devil's Got Your Tongue, jazz singer Abbey Lincoln includes two songs about her parents -- both of whom are now dead. Lincoln says she composed the songs because there were a few things she still needed to write down and to say.

After nearly 20 years without recording for a major U.S. label, jazz singer Abbey Lincoln has a new album, World is Falling Down.

Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement return for a second season of their music-driven comedy series, which follows two hapless New Zealanders trying to make it as a folk-pop band in New York City.