Music

April was a great month for The Lumineers. In addition to releasing its eponymous debut, the band played a ton of sold-out shows across the U.S.

The death of a great musician ripples through the jazz community. It's a special loss to those improvisers we might call immediate survivors: working partners who'll miss that special interaction with a singular musician.

It's taken a decade, but Trampled by Turtles' music has officially crossed over into the mainstream. The Minnesota band's most recent albums, Palomino and the new Stars and Satellites, have helped Trampled by Turtles make the transition from club favorite to the sort of cult sensation that draws enormous festival crowds.

K-Holes' frayed, exhausted, grimy smear of rock 'n' roll is swaddled in the uneven patchwork of New York City's '80s no-wave scene. The band wields its own unique sort of holler — an earth-colored concrete mold of sax and group mantras and waves of ricocheting build. Within "Child," the opener from K-Holes' second full-length album Dismania, the group's sonic theory is made plain: malignant patience and a straightforward attack, with all five tongues in cheek and aching jaws set firm.

The L.A. indie-folk band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros has been described as looking like something of a hippie cult on stage. Of course, every cult should have a leader, and this one is led by a singer whose real name is Alex Ebert. He has a long beard and long, unkempt hair, and he often doesn't wear a shirt or even shoes. During shows, he dances around in circles shaking a tambourine.

Some of the best recent classical music stories have come from Venezuela, that country's youth orchestra program El Sistema and its most popular graduate, Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel.

When the Canadian Brass came to NPR for a Tiny Desk Concert, the group kicked off the show with a piece its members say has been central to its repertoire for more than 40 years. It's a transcription of an organ work, Johann Sebastian Bach's "Little" Fugue in G Minor.