NPR Music - You Must Hear This

FIRST LISTEN First Listen: Jeremy Messersmith, 'Heart Murmurs' With its subtle strings and sly infectiousness,Heart Murmurs is no less than an attempt to craft a new batch of pop standards. Whether Messersmith succeeds depends mostly on how many people are lucky enough to hear him. Stream the album

TINY DESK CONCERTS Angel Olsen: Tiny Desk Concert Without her backing band, the expressive, ethereal singer previews songs from her new album, Burn Your Fire for No Witness. Watch her and you'll see calm in her eyes; listen to her and you'll sense torment in her heart. Read this story

MUSIC NEWS Reinventing The Music Video, One Street Corner At A Time The French website La Blogothéque is famous for what it calls "Take Away Shows": original, informal videos of musicians from across the U.S. and Europe playing live in unlikely places. Read this story

FAVORITE SESSIONS KEXP Presents: Helmet Page Hamilton and his crew were a huge deal in the early 1990s, but his more recent material has gone, for lack of a better term, unsung. Watch him perform "Blacktop" live in KEXP's studios. Watch the video

FIRST LISTEN First Listen: Marissa Nadler, 'July' On her sixth album, the Bostonian singer-songwriter gets darker and more sinister than ever before. Its title must refer to a cold, polarizing kind of July, with the frigid climes that accompany an early-February release. Stream the album