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Zap Mama's CD Ancestry in Progress charts a path from African a capella to a global vision of soul. Leader Marie Daulne says her new songs weave vocal styles from Africa and the East with technologies and music of the West. Hear NPR's Renee Montagne.

Tom Verlaine shook up the music world with his punk-rock group Television in the mid-1970s. Can he do it again? He's giving it a shot with two new CDs — one an instrumental work featuring his influential guitar style — and a world tour.

It had to be on Kai Neukerman's wish list to play with Pearl Jam. Neukerman left the Oakland arena saying it felt surreal, but also with a bit of immortality.

Aqualung created a stir in Britain with a pop song that first drew attention as the background for a car advertisement. Now Matt Hales' piano-driven pop act is quietly mounting a U.S. invasion with a new CD, Strange and Beautiful.

Jack and Meg White are the singer-drummer duo who make up the White Stripes. Their fifth CD, Get Behind Me Satan, is being hailed as an extension of the raw, energetic sound of their earliest work.

The documentary Festival Express captures a 1970 train tour across Canada with Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead and other music icons. Director Bob Smeaton talks to NPR's Liane Hansen.

We present the first of our Lost & Found Sound Memphis trilogy with this portrait of the early years of Sam Phillips and his legendary Memphis Recording Service. This was before he recorded Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. Interviews with Sam, his family, Ike Turner and others are interwoven with the remote recordings he made of talent shows, funerals and proms to support his passion for recording the raw unrecorded music of the 1950s South.

Singer Madeleine Peyroux moved to France at age 15, honing her vocal talents on the streets of Paris before making her recording debut at age 22. Eight years later she's back with a new CD, Careless Love. She speaks with NPR's Sheilah Kast.

Singer-songwriter Nellie McKay, 19, has been compared to both Doris Day and Eminem. Her debut CD, Get Away From Me, includes jazz, rap, blues, Latin, rock and more, reflecting her eclectic life — she was born in London and grew up in Harlem. Hear six songs from her performance in NPR's Studio 4A.

In 480 B.C., a powerful Persian armada attacked the Greek navy at Salamis, an island off Athens. In his book The Battle of Salamis, historian Barry Strauss makes a case that the Greeks' surprising victory assured the survival of Western civilization. He talks to NPR's Brian Naylor.