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Spring Awakening is winning critical praise as a fresh interpretation of the Broadway musical. Based on a 19th-century play, the angst-ridden teen musical defies convention by dealing with tough topics and raw adolescent feelings.

Andy Palacio's album Watina is an effort to document his people's culture and prevent its extinction. Palacio is of the Garifuna people — descendants of shipwrecked slaves who settled on the east coast of Central America.

The Last Town Chorus is the musical brainchild of Megan Hickey, a singer/songwriter who plays and writes songs almost exclusively on lap steel guitar. The group makes music for in-between hours, when the world around you is eerily quiet, when you can't sleep but you can't wake up.

Michael Penn seemed like a budding superstar in 1989, but he's never fully capitalized on his early momentum. His commercially under-appreciated 2005 album Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947, led by "Walter Reed," just received a deluxe reissue treatment.

James Morrison's Undiscovered made him a star in his native U.K. last summer, and the disc's release here portends similarly big things: Mixing the smoky soul of Terence Trent D'Arby with the catchy crooning of James Blunt, the 22-year-old is nothing if not commercially viable.

France has produced remarkable music over the years, from the emotive chanson of Edith Piaf to Serge Gainsbourg's iconoclastic work to the electronic melodies of the band Air. But these days there are so many young artists stirring the charts that it seems like French music is in the process of reinventing itself.

Tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson's brilliant Power To The People was recorded in 1969, when jazz musicians were confronting the influence of rock and soul. Some had trouble, but Henderson wrote tunes that always sneaked a step or two beyond convention.

Lily Allen is Britain's most addictive pop artist with dizzying melodies and lyrics that are as comical as they are biting. Now on tour for her multi-million selling album Alright, Still, Allen performs at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. in a full concert, originally webcast live on NPR.org.

Enormously popular in their home country of Ireland, The Frames make intimate, reflective rock led by singer/guitarist Glen Hansard. Now on tour for their sixth and best studio album to date, The Cost, The Frames visit Washington, D.C. for a concert, originally webcast live on NPR.org Apr. 26.

It's not exactly "live," and to modern ears, its tightly scripted songs likely won't seem terribly "dangerous." Yet Live and Dangerous, a 1978 double album, is the best existing document of the under-appreciated Irish hard-rock band Thin Lizzy.