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Romanian singer Sanda Weigl learned traditional songs from the gypsies living around her home when she was a child. Today, she sings these songs across the U.S. as part of a Romanian cultural outreach campaign, but the singer's life remains larger than the Gypsy lore reflected in her songs.

When pop stars collaborated with African musicians in the 1980s and '90s, they embraced sounds once heard as foreign and exotic. Now a new generation of American musicians is creating homegrown rock music with a West African twist.

Singer-songwriter Brian Carpenter has cited places like Coney Island and the Florida Panhandle as inspiration for his work. On his latest album, Hothouse Stomp, Carpenter musically travels back to the jazz scene in 1920s Harlem and Chicago.

T.C. Boyle is the author of 15 books, including Drop City, nominated for a National Book Award last year. Boyle's fiction is known for its wit, biting satire, historical sweep and verbal pyrotechnics. For Intersections, a Morning Edition series on artists and their influences, Boyle says his literary reputation owes much to rock 'n' roll.

Actress Zooey Deschanel has made a move from the big screen to the indie-rock stage, recently co-founding the group She and Him. Deschanel joins Fresh Air to discuss her music and her band's new album, Volume One.

Part Tom Waits, part Italian philosopher, singer-songwriter Vinicio Capossela thinks of himself as an "enchanter." His stage shows are theatrical journeys into mythology, outsider ideologies and Americana.

Dolorean is an Oregon-based band that started out playing country-rock but then slowly moved into pop-music territory. Rock critic Ken Tucker says the group's new album Unfazed is deliberate, but not maudlin.

The dB's, led by singer-songwriter-guitarists Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey, hasn't made an album with the original line-up in 30 years. Rock critic Ken Tucker says the band's new album, Falling Off the Sky, sweeps aside decades and nostalgia to achieve a vital sound for today.

The venerated string quartet makes a stop on its 50th anniversary tour to play music from the dawn of the string quartet era right up to the present.

Assigned the task of picking a standout song from The Rolling Stones' catalog, the guitarist settled on one he helped compose: the disco-inflected "Dance (Pt. 1)."