Exclusive First Listen

Jones' new album, The Fall, maintains her jazzy, sultry sound while pushing into more contemporary pop territory. It's a different direction for the singer, but suitable for old fans and newcomers alike.

Inspired by the emotionally charged and virtuosic music of the Baroque era, the adventurous mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli's new CD is devoted to the dazzling music associated with the age of the castrati.

Rather than create a live album spanning its greatest hits, the legendary Athens, Ga., band picked out an unlikely assortment of 39 songs known mostly to R.E.M. diehards. Hear Live at the Olympia in its entirety for the week leading up to the collection's Oct. 27 release.

The lead singers of Death Cab for Cutie and Son Volt had never met until they discovered their mutual admiration for writer Jack Kerouac. Now, they've released an album based on Kerouac's 1962 novel Big Sur. Hear One Fast Move or I'm Gone in its entirety before its Oct. 20 release.

Last year, the prodigious saxophonist took home the prestigious Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships. He's used the opportunities to investigate his Puerto Rican musical roots; his new album is a methodical but natural-feeling synthesis of folkloric plena and mainland modern jazz. Hear Esta Plena in its entirety for the week preceding its Oct. 20 physical release.

Recording as The Swell Season, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova recorded a lush, lovely, heartfelt gem in the new Strict Joy, on which they examine a tumultuous relationship over a mostly calm bed of acoustic guitars, pianos and strings. You can hear Strict Joy in its entirety here for the two weeks leading up to its Oct. 27 release.

Her new record is free of cynicism, full of heart and more elegant than a mere nostalgia trip. Normal as Blueberry Pie revisits the past while offering a fresh take on American classics by George and Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer, Burt Bacharach and Les Brown. She also sings an original.

For guys who seem to have done everything, sometimes all at once, The Flaming Lips' members haven't stopped innovating. Their latest album, Embryonic, finds the ever-evolving band shape-shifting once again. Listen to the new record in its entirety, a week before it hits stores on Oct. 13.

Iyer's new album is the work of a piano trio playing mostly covers — a common sight in jazz. To anyone paying attention to these sounds, which draw from visionaries as diverse as Andrew Hill and M.I.A., it's readily evident that his is an uncommon, even daring approach. Hear the record, Historicity, in its entirety for the week preceding its Oct. 13 U.S. release.

The four symphonies by Brahms are like four distinct personalities, ranging from the dark and dramatic to the sunny and lyrical. The great Berlin Philharmonic has this music in its blood. Hear the entire new three-disc set, with conductor Simon Rattle, for the week leading up to its Oct. 6 release.

Noah and the Whale's The First Days of Spring is the breakup album of the year, maybe even the album of the year, and it comes out Oct. 6. Which means that, as of this writing, you have exactly seven days to torpedo a personal relationship in such a way that these songs can nurse your psychic wounds.

Back in 1973, Cash told her father that she wanted to play country music for a living. Johnny Cash was, to put it mildly, an authority on the subject, so he made her a list of 100 essential songs she needed to hear as she embarked on her career. The List, heard here in its entirety for the week leading up to its Oct. 6 release, finds the younger Cash performing 12 of those songs.

Hear the new solo album from former Dinosaur Jr. bassist and Sebadoh frontman Lou Barlow in its entirety. Goodnight Unknown covers a lot of emotional territory, examining fractured lives with a restrained but potent mix of alternately crunchy and plaintive guitars and simple rhythms.

With their roots in punk and bluegrass, Seth and Scott Avett know how and when to careen wildly, almost recklessly. But in their albums as The Avett Brothers, they're just as likely to ruminate softly on devotion, desire and regret, in austere, sweet-natured songs that exude a sort of hard-won decency. Hear the band's much-anticipated major-label debut, I and Love and You, in its entirety here for the week leading up to its release on Sept. 29.

In Volcano Choir, Bon Iver's Vernon sets his layered, often chopped-up vocals atop the experimental instrumental musings of the Milwaukee-based band Collections of Colonies of Bees. Hear the indie supergroup's debut album, Unmap, in its entirety for the week leading up to its release on Sept. 22.

Latin jazz percussionist and bandleader Poncho Sanchez has had a prolific career: He's released 24 albums in the last three decades, and his latest, Psychedelic Blues, continues to explore new realms of jazz. On the album, he revisits the standards and offers up two new originals. Hear Psychedelic Blues in its entirety, a week before its Sept. 29 release date.

With 98 songs, the Memphis group's new box set (Keep an Eye on the Sky) is a definitive collection of Big Star's early-'70s recordings. It sets the record straight about a massively influential group that inspired some of rock's biggest stars. From now until its release on Sept. 15, you can stream the box set's remarkable first disc (26 songs) in its entirety.

One of America's most influential and captivating rock bands, Hoboken, N.J.'s Yo La Tengo celebrates its 25th anniversary with the release of Popular Songs, which continues the trio's tradition of balancing soft acoustic pop with dark, enthralling rock. Hear the album in its entirety here, for the week prior to its release on Sept. 8.

Swedish singer Victoria Bergsman, who records as Taken by Trees, went to Pakistan to make her second album, East of Eden. The result does not sound like another ersatz "world-music" collaboration. Instead, she and producer/guitarist/engineer Andreas Soderstrom take melodies and rhythms recorded there and build on them to create their own songs. Hear the album in its entirety, a week before its Sept. 8 release.

Rising young soprano Danielle de Niese is about to release a new album dedicated to lesser-known Mozart arias. Hear the entire CD before it's released, and download an NPR exclusive bonus track: "Pupille Amate," from an opera Mozart wrote when he was 16.

It took nearly eight years to make, but Circulatory System's breathtaking new album, Signal Morning, justifies the wait. The 17 new tracks, culled from hours of recorded material and meticulously pieced together in more than half a dozen different studios, are sonic wonders. Signal Morning assembles a mysterious and mesmerizing world of orchestrated chaos that offers new discoveries with each listen.

Buckley was just 20 years old in 1967, when Izzy Young asked him to play above his store on Sixth Avenue in New York City. In front of a small crowd of 35, Young set up a field recording kit amidst stacks of books and records and flipped the reels every now and again, as Buckley played completely unadorned.

What differentiated the Ramblers from the commercial folk groups was their interest in the music's origins. They were tireless chroniclers and ambassadors of vernacular music, the blues, bluegrass and Cajun music of rural America. Hear the entire first disc of the band's new 50th anniversary, three-CD compilation.

On his 11th studio album, Henry sounds raw and stark, both as a singer and as a guitarist. The songs are often blues-based, and Blood From Stars sounds genuinely inspired, which makes it a record with a long shelf life.