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As fitness goes high-tech, even your bathroom scale is going digital. One company went from making old-fashioned spring-loaded scales to scales that aren't just digital but use all sorts of high-tech applications to talk directly to your wireless device.

The Gourds' members present their music in familiar roots-rock wrappings, but nothing about the band is typical. Cheating hearts or lovesick blues don't dominate the band's landscape; instead, this is a brainy and obtuse bunch, and its songs reflect that fact. Hear the band perform new material from KUT.

Washington, D.C., is known more for suits than fun, but it also has a long history as a home to diverse styles of music — from Duke Ellington to hardcore to go-go — and some of the hottest guitarists to ever touch the fretboard: Roy Clark, Roy Buchanan, Danny Gatton. Today, the city is home to an experimental music scene that's thriving under D.C.'s official radar.

The Austin group began as a collective of three songwriters who shared the same Wednesday-night gig. It became a country-rock quintet who rode a wave of local buzz on the way to releasing three recordings in less than three years.

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.

Department of Eagles recently returned with its second album, In Ear Park. It's a stimulating and lively disc that conjures up precious childhood memories, evoking a sense of nostalgia, joy and, at times, melancholy. Hear a session from WXPN.

Friend and patron to several generations of composers and artists, Freeman was the catalyst behind the opera Nixon in China by John Adams, as well as pieces by John Cage, Harry Partch, Thomas Ades, Philip Glass and dozens of others.

Jolie Holland has been called one of America's finest musical poets. Her words find communion with her music, with roots in folk, traditional country, jazz and a hint of the blues. She performs sad, beautiful new songs in a session from WXPN.

He still isn't very well-known in the U.S., but Solal is considered one of the greatest living European jazz musicians. And at 81, the pianist still keeps a schedule of concerts and club gigs that would wear out someone half his age.

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.