World Cafe

Last Good Tooth shares a hometown — Providence, R.I. — with The Low Anthem, and the two bands have both shown a penchant for experimenting with fiddles and Appalachian music.

Led by songwriter Penn Sultan, the son of sculptor Donald Sultan, Last Good Tooth crafts free-wheeling songs, marked by delightful extended breaks and smart lyrics. The group recently relocated to New York City, and its new album (Not Without Work and Rest) is out now on Conor Oberst's Team Love Records.

It's a middle-age milestone, dealing with a parent's death. Singer-songwriter Patty Griffin turns the experience into powerful moments on her new album, American Kid. The album features songs inspired by everything from her dad exclaiming "Don't let me die in Florida!" to the gleam in her grandfather's eye on his own wedding day.

Recording under the name Villagers, Dublin singer-songwriter Conor O'Brien released his debut album, Becoming a Jackal, in 2010. A critically acclaimed Mercury Prize nominee, that record was stripped-down singer-songwriter fare.

But O'Brien changed a bit during the two-plus years leading up to the release of {Awayland}. The songwriter had listened to lots of techno in the interim and approached the new album with Cinemascope ambitions.

Nonchalant raw riffage and perfect off-the-cuff lyrics are what attracted me to Light Up Gold, the second full-length album from the Brooklyn indie-rock band Parquet Courts.

On this edition of World Cafe, we were lucky enough to hear three new songs that were written after the release of Light Up Gold. We can't say what will become of them, but "Dear Ramona," in particular, is extraordinary.

Madeleine Peyroux started singing blues and jazz on the streets of Paris. Over the course of her career, Peyroux has released six albums, sold more than a million copies of her second record (Careless Love) and developed a following for her easygoing, Billie Holiday-tinged sound.