Music

The string-laden indie-folk band Horse Feathers makes its second appearance on Mountain Stage, recorded live on the campus of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Centering on the soft vocals and guitar of Justin Ringle, Horse Feathers' "chamber folk" sound is crafted with the assistance of cellist Lauren Vidal, violinist Angie Kuzma, Dustin Dybvig on drums and piano, and Nathan Crockett on violin, mandolin and the musical saw.

For all the plot development in the series' infancy, last Sunday's episode of Treme was unusually saturated in live performances. The second half of the episode, especially, seemed like one concert after another. Here with me to recap the musical goings-on is WBGO's Josh Jackson.

I was beyond excited and just a little nervous as I made the 30-second walk from the booth to the live room for this session in the KEXP studios. Usually, these things happen with one artist, but tonight I'd corral a round-robin of five MCs, a couple of whom were behind some of my favorite hip-hop of all time. Between the MCs, the DJs, the hype men and the keyboardists (not to mention KEXP's photographers and videographers), there were a dozen people waiting at the end of the hall.

The latest tease from this fall's upcoming collection of remixed Philip Glass tunes comes from Beck. The 20-minute song, "NYC: 73-78," includes snippets from more than 20 Glass songs, which Beck cut together and re-imagined.

We first met Kat Edmonson nearly four years ago, when All Songs Considered put out a challenge to songwriters on the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration. We asked musicians around the country to capture the moment in song, and Edmonson, a native of Texas, wrote and sent us "Be the Change." It was clearly the best song we received, and she sang it with a unique voice and wonderful phrasing — so spot on.

There's a symphony of sound playing this month at the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle. Composer and sound artist Abby Aresty recorded the natural sounds of the park over the course of a year — including a gurgling pond, a bicycle rolling by on a gravel path, bird song — and then mixed the recordings into seven compositions.

The pieces are played through speakers that have been installed at seven sites around the arboretum. The project is called Paths II: The Music Of Trees.

The Lighthouse and the Whaler is a band based in Cleveland, Ohio, though its name actually references the waters off the coast of Massachusetts. Originally, Michael LoPresti and Aaron Smith were its only members, and the very first song they wrote together, "The Field Song," ended up picked for a Paste sampler CD.

In 1978, it seemed that every kid in Britain wanted to be in a punk band. But in Birmingham, that blighted industrial scar in the middle of the island, there wasn't much punk to be seen. The oasis was a club called Barbarella's, and that's where Dave Wakeling and Andy Cox hung out.

Hot Club of Cowtown makes its fifth appearance on Mountain Stage, recorded live on the campus of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. The band formed in 1996, when guitarist and singer Whit Smith answered an advertisement placed by singer and fiddler Elana James.