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On the eve of the release of its latest album, Stay Positive, The Hold Steady stopped by the WFUV studios for a performance and interview. The group blasted through four new songs with the confidence and urgency of a band at its best.

Horace Silver is a piano-playing, pencil-packing papa whose songs showcase a family of jazz characters such as "Sister Sadie" and "Senor Blues." His music filled Dee Dee Bridgewater's album Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver. This concert in his honor comes from the Discoveries at Walt Disney Concert Hall series in Los Angeles.

In the constant race to find the next cure for jazz (hint: it ain't broken), Aaron Parks seems perfectly content to set his own pace. The 24 year-old pianist discovered music intuitively. In a session from WBGO, Parks plays a mix of jazz and rock that's ultimately neither of those things.

William Berger, author of Puccini Without Excuses, sizes up two new and very different recordings of the composer's best-known opera. Berger says the beauty of Bohème lies in the little details of the characters' lives.

With a blood-spattered bride and a high-intensity mad scene, Donizetti's early-19th-century hit sets the standard for operatic melodrama. It gets a rare performance in its French version from Glimmerglass Opera, in upstate New York.

Telepathique is one heck of a sexy band. For 20 minutes, the Sao Paulo-based group turned the intimate space of a KEXP studio into a late-night dance club. The band's combination of electronic beats and rhythms with thrashing drums and live guitar sounds both unique and familiar.

The new CD, One Ounce of Truth, puts the vivid words of poet and writer Nikki Giovanni to music, using a wide range of musical styles like bossa nova, jazz and soul. NPR's Tony Cox talks with Giovanni and singer Capathia Jenkins about the project.

Covering music from Marian Anderson to ZZ Top, 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: A Listener's Life List covers all genres in its more than 900 pages. It's driven by the notion that "the more you love music, the more music you love." Author Tom Moon submits his picks for the best summer recordings.

It was a short commute for Brooklyn's Little Jackie when it performed at the Bronx studios of WFUV. The band strips away Adam Pallin's lush production in this session with an acoustic guitar, percussion and back-up vocalists. Vocalist Imani Coppola even pulls out her violin on a Shangri-Las cover.

It's fair to say that this music, recorded live at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., is the best new material from Brian Wilson in more than 30 years.That Lucky Old Sun is a song cycle based on a tune with its spiritual roots in slavery. That song is about hardship, but this semi-autobiographical song cycle is about nostalgia. It's what life in California means to Wilson, and what Wilson means to California.