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The night before he stopped by the Desk, Flea took a moment between songs at the Black Cat in Washington, D.C., to call his experience of performing with a jazz band "an adventure." After four decades as a founding member and bassist for Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea was touring on his debut solo album, Honora, in small venues, including the NPR Music office space.

The landscape for music discovery has changed drastically over the last few decades. Largely gone are the days of finding your new favorite song by watching MTV or switching through radio stations. Magazine and newspaper reviews are harder and harder to come by, given the decline of print journalism (and arts coverage in particular).

Long lost tapes of an Oscar Peterson piano performance in Detroit take us back in time to the night the jazz session was recorded.

Ketch Secor of the band, Old Crow Medicine Show, says his group's latest album, "Union Made," is a love letter to the United States. It's full of stories from the country's past and present.

Jermaine Butler, who performs as "Jermaine from the South," entered his Creole-inspired song "Dan Vi-Cila" to NPR's Tiny Desk Contest.

One night last month, President Ronald Reagan's voice floated above music from his film career at his presidential library and museum in Simi Valley, Calif. He is the star of a new orchestral and video work highlighting episodes from his colorful life. A regional group, the New West Symphony, created "The Ronald Reagan Overture" as part of a bigger concert marking the country's 250th anniversary.

Shakira is at it again with her latest World Cup anthem. She’s just one of the pop superstars uniting for the first halftime show for a World Cup final. Host Indira Lakshmanan hears more about the unofficial soundtrack of the beautiful game with Miguel Perez of NPR’s World Cafe. This article was originally published on WBUR.org. Copyright 2026 WBUR

For yet another week, the top of the pop charts feel familiar — country star Ella Langley holds at No. 1 with "Choosin' Texas," while the K-pop boy band ATEEZ lands atop the albums chart yet again. But if you look just outside the top 10 on this week's Hot 100, a few intriguing songs seem poised to crash the chart's uppermost reaches. The year's biggest hit, "Choosin' Texas," has held the Billboard Hot 100's top spot for 12 nonconsecutive weeks.

"My heart can confide in itself / No, I don't need no one else / To show me the way," the incandescent singer Baby Rose once disclosed, consoling herself on the funky song "Fight Club" from her 2023 album Through and Through. Part of a spirited self-pep talk, the line is a useful way to think about her music. The act of confiding in oneself is the central conceit for many of her songs — a means to make a path forward, treating external voices as brush to be cleared.

With the release of the Rolling Stones' latest studio effort, "Foreign Tongues," NPR Music's Ann Powers reviews that album and makes the case for Mick and Keith to keep going as long as they want.