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  1. You know what's awesome? Drum fills. Can you identify a song when it's stripped down to a just few seconds of isolated drum pounding?
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  3. Watch the bluesy Irish singer-songwriter Hozier play "Take Me to Church" in the KCRW studios. http://n.pr/OYzlCE

    Photo: Rob LaFond/KCRW
    Photo: Watch the bluesy Irish singer-songwriter Hozier play "Take Me to Church" in the KCRW studios. http://n.pr/OYzlCE

Photo: Rob LaFond/KCRW
  4. Is festival fatigue the first sign of an encroaching spiral into desiccation and death? Or is fair and natural to hit a point in life where you don't feel like it anymore?
  5. NPR's Alt.Latino is in Mexico City for the massive Vive latino 2014 festival. Here are 14 bands they can't wait to see.
  6. Watch Kristian Bell strip down The Wytches' hair-flinging psych-rock to an acoustic guitar in the backyard of an Austin coffee shop. http://n.pr/1jRzO2U
    Photo: Watch Kristian Bell strip down The Wytches' hair-flinging psych-rock to an acoustic guitar in the backyard of an Austin coffee shop. http://n.pr/1jRzO2U
  7. 831 new works and 40 years later, the Kronos Quartet still nudges composers and audiences in new directions.
  8. For one night, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra experimented with a pop-up orchestra of professionals, students and amateurs of all ages. http://n.pr/1gYwVd7
    Photo: For one night, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra experimented with a pop-up orchestra of professionals, students and amateurs of all ages. http://n.pr/1gYwVd7
  9. 20-year-old producer Young Chop's made beats for everyone from Pusha T to Cassie. In a backyard interview with NPR Hip-Hop, he says he looks to the '70s for inspiration.
  10. Watch the superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma and many of his close friends from all over the world in action at a theatrical props warehouse in Brooklyn.
  11. Dan Willson drifted away from the Jehovah's Witnesses as a teenager. His second album as Withered Hand finds him at loose ends with his religious faith — not lost so much as spiritually dislocated.
  12. Norwegian singer Monica Birkenes, a.k.a. Mr Little Jeans, makes epic pop with gnarled synths. Her latest video follows a trucker hopped up on drugs as he traverses his haunted past.
  13. Hear brand new cuts from The Black Keys and Swans, plus our latest musical discoveries, including singer Dylan Shearer, who channels Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.
  14. Got 5 minutes? Want to help NPR Music? Take our spring survey. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CF9QCQK
  15. Lil Jon may be best known as the king of crunk, but "Turn Down for What" isn't his first time working with a dance music producer.
  16. To mark the venturesome Kronos Quartet's 40 years of commissioning and performing and new music, composers Steve Reich, Terry Riley and others recall their favorite Kronos memories.
  17. Watch Angel Olsen perform the intense and incendiary "Sweet Dreams" in the KEXP studios. http://n.pr/1gtYjVO

    Photo: Amber Zbitnoff/KEXP
    Photo: Watch Angel Olsen perform the intense and incendiary "Sweet Dreams" in the KEXP studios. http://n.pr/1gtYjVO

Photo: Amber Zbitnoff/KEXP
  18. On Feb. 5, 1953, Bud Powell was uncommunicative face to face at the New York jazz club Birdland. But when he sat at the keys, it was a whole other story.
  19. Swept away by a hurricane, crushed by baggage handlers, infested by cockroaches — nothing hurts quite like the destruction of a musical instrument.
  20. Watch the young operatic tenor Joseph Calleja with the old-school style sing NPR's Tiny Desk. http://n.pr/Q8filV

    Photo: Abbey Oldham/NPR
    Photo: Watch the young operatic tenor Joseph Calleja with the old-school style sing NPR's Tiny Desk. http://n.pr/Q8filV

Photo: Abbey Oldham/NPR
  21. The mastermind behind metal's most cartoonishly grotesque band, Gwar, brought levity to the genre.
  22. Morning Edition host David Greene talks to British singer-songwriter and former Culture Club frontman Boy George about his first album in 19 years, 'This Is What I Do.'
  23. "When you make music, you don't really think about how you're going to explain it at the end," Skrillex's Sonny Moore tells NPR's Arun Rath. http://n.pr/ONAwEG

    Photo: Adam Kissick for NPR
    Photo: "When you make music, you don't really think about how you're going to explain it at the end," Skrillex's Sonny Moore tells NPR's Arun Rath. http://n.pr/ONAwEG

Photo: Adam Kissick for NPR
  24. Yasmine Hamdan makes electro-pop by way of Lebanon that's both intimately familiar and bracingly new. Stream 'Ya Nass' from NPR Music's First Listen. http://n.pr/1g9rOLG
    Photo: Yasmine Hamdan makes electro-pop by way of Lebanon that's both intimately familiar and bracingly new. Stream 'Ya Nass' from NPR Music's First Listen. http://n.pr/1g9rOLG
  25. Fresh out of rehab and a rocky point in his marriage to June Carter, Johnny Cash recorded an album in the early 1980s that his fans never got to hear.
  26. Your Sunday long read: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah on celebrity fandom and the #BeyHive.
  27. The Bad Plus plays the score to Igor Stravinsky’s gloriously noisy, 101-year-old fever dream of a ballet as literally as possible. Stream 'The Rite of Spring' from NPR Music's First Listen. http://n.pr/1kQpkCo
    Photo: The Bad Plus plays the score to Igor Stravinsky’s gloriously noisy, 101-year-old fever dream of a ballet as literally as possible. Stream 'The Rite of Spring' from NPR Music's First Listen. http://n.pr/1kQpkCo
  28. "We are the spark that lights the inferno." Stream 'Heathen,' the crushing new album by Baton Rouge metal band Thou, from NPR Music's First Listen. http://n.pr/1jidlfg
    Photo: "We are the spark that lights the inferno." Stream 'Heathen,' the crushing new album by Baton Rouge metal band Thou, from NPR Music's First Listen. http://n.pr/1jidlfg
  29. NPR's Alt.Latino took a break from seeing bands long enough to discuss their favorite SXSW music over heaping plates of Texas barbecue.
  30. David Letterman and GIFs made this long-running Baltimore band famous. Now it’s time to hear Future Islands new album. Stream 'Singles' from NPR Music's First Listen. http://n.pr/PYv2I7
    Photo: David Letterman and GIFs made this long-running Baltimore band famous. Now it’s time to hear Future Islands new album. Stream 'Singles' from NPR Music's First Listen. http://n.pr/PYv2I7
  31. When your oeuvre is built on left turns, how better to throw your fan base for a loop than by going straight ahead? Stream Liars' 'Mess' from NPR Music's First Listen. http://n.pr/1dxWmly
    Photo: When your oeuvre is built on left turns, how better to throw your fan base for a loop than by going straight ahead? Stream Liars' 'Mess' from NPR Music's First Listen. http://n.pr/1dxWmly
  32. For some shops, ordering all of those special Record Store Day releases is "a roll of the dice." WAMU 88.5's Bandwidth reports.
  33. 50 years ago today, Andrew Hill recorded 'Point of Departure.' 50 years later, it still sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday. Hear the pianist in a Piano Jazz episode from 2005.
  34. Are you brainy when it comes to Bach, or bamboozled? Know your cantatas from your concertos? Match your wits against the granddaddy of composers in this 'Big Bach' puzzler.
  35. Download 10 songs from our favorite acts out of SXSW, including Future Islands, PHOX, Sergio Mendoza Y La Orkesta, Ages and Ages, and much more.

Earlier in 2014