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The Slip's music seems at first like straightforward indie-rock, but its subtle and intricate layers — the likely product of the group's jam-band roots — reveal themselves over time. Its three members have been together since the early '90s, when they attended high school together.

Music critic Milo Miles tells us how the klezmer-fusion band the Klezmatics are keeping the music of Woody Guthrie alive. Their latest albums are Woody Guthrie's Happy Joyous Hanukkah and the Grammy-nominated Wonder Wheel. They are currently on tour.

After the more than 15 years together, the five-piece Canadian band Barenaked Ladies is having a first. They are releasing their latest album, Barenaked Ladies Are Me, on their own record label. Two members of the band, Steven Page and Kevin Hearn, elaborate.

On New Year's Eve, singer Audra McDonald will ask and answer a question at the same time, by singing "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" with the New York Philharmonic. In this video segment, Performance Today host Fred Child talks with McDonald about her last concert of 2006.

The mother of 4-year-old girl, NPR host Melissa Block doesn't have patience for music that panders to what I consider to be misguided notions of what adults think kids must like. She shares some ideas for children's CDs that her whole family enjoys.

It's not easy living on the avant-garde edge of any art, let alone the always-changing world of jazz. But for nearly 50 years, the sound of Ornette Coleman has proven to be one of the most unorthodox — and most influential — in modern jazz.

Another favorite story from 2006 was our visit with New Orleans' Dirty Dozen Brass Band after Hurricane Katrina.

As Stephanie McKay belts out harrowing scenes of teen pregnancy and black-on-black gun violence, she sounds like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Yet as incendiary and forceful as her gripping voice remains, her wails and cries never overheat into a melismatic mess.

At once spare and elegant, with an equal flair for whisper-quiet simplicity and orchestral bombast, Rice's music conveys emotional intensity and straightforward beauty at the same time. Rice performs a noon concert from WXPN and World Cafe Live in Philadelphia.

The tone of The Twilight Singers' "Live with Me" moves beyond that of a simple lover's plea: Over an ominous slide guitar, washes of electric guitars and a pulsing backbeat, the vibe gets pushed into ever more unnerving territory, thanks to two great singers who know their way around it.