Anand Wilder has released his debut solo album after the breakup of the band Yeasayer.  I Don’t Know My Words (written and recorded throughout lockdown) is full of great, wide-angled pop, which may look to 1970s hippie music and Indian popular cinema. For the Soundcheck Podcast, Anand Wilder and his band play some of these songs from his studio, in arrangements including mountain dulcimer and steamy EWI (electronic wind instrument.) – Caryn Havlik

Theon Cross is a stunning tuba player, a member of Mercury-nominated group Sons Of Kemet, and a central figure on London’s new music scene. He’s also just released a solo album full of inventive ways of processing and extending the tuba’s sound, while drawing on Caribbean music, grime, jazz, and the city’s spoken word scene.  He and his quartet offer live, instrumental versions of some of those songs for the Soundcheck Podcast.

North Carolina-based traditional musician Jake Xerxes Fussell approaches ostensibly antique songs of the American south as a folklorist and as a creative musician, pulling out the relatable bits and going for the unexpected arrangements, including pedal steel, horns, and strings. He’s a lifelong student and researcher of folk and roots and blues music – second generation, actually, since his father was also a folklorist – and can hold forth on murder ballads, disaster songs, Choctaw fiddlers, sea shanties, and blues and gospel songs. He plays some of these elegantly- arranged and composed story-songs from his latest album, Good and Green Again, for the Soundcheck Podcast. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Love Farewell,” “The Golden Willow Tree”

Watch "Love Farewell":

Watch “The Golden Willow Tree”:

The orchestral-folk-rock Minnesota band Cloud Cult is a creative collective who continually celebrates catharsis, change, and comfort through music and multimedia performances. [They’re also hailed as one of the Top 10 Green Bands by Rolling Stone with environmentally-sound packaging, a geothermal-powered studio, and touring with net zero greenhouse gases.] The latest record, Metamorphosis, is “all about inner change... from the kind that's marinated in joy to the kind that hurts like hell but somehow makes room for a better you. Life is a rabbit hole of wonder, mystery, chaos, pain, and love, and these songs are here to help you hum your way through it.” (Cloud Cult’s Facebook).

From the woods of Wisconsin, on a balmy 30 degree day, Cloud Cult’s founder and main songwriter Craig Minowa plays in the snow with an acoustic guitar, featuring the rest of the band on backing tracks. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Back Into My Arms” “Victor” “Song From Oblivion”

Watch: "Back Into My Arms":

Watch "Victor":

Watch "Song from Oblivion":

The New York-based Haitian singer and songwriter Emeline Michel combines traditional Haitian kompa, rasyn, and twoubadou music with jazz, R & B, and her gospel choir roots. She is a Red Cross Ambassador, and some of her lyrics deal with social issues, especially those affecting women and children. Emeline Michel and her band play moving and joyful tunes, both old and new, for the Soundcheck Podcast. Emeline Michel plays at Chelsea Table + Stage on Friday, March 18.

Set list: Pé Leténel, Que Tonne Reigne Vienne, Ban'm La Jwa (Give me joy)

Watch "Pé Leténel":

Watch: "Que Tonne Reigne Vienne":

Watch "Ban'm La Jwa": 

Guitarist and songwriter Brad Barr of the Montreal-based indie-folk band The Barr Brothers has just released an unusual solo record of instrumentals, The Winter Mission -  “a kaleidoscope of sound” (Schaefer), featuring many different members of the guitar family, loops, and the shruti box (used to provide the drone in Indian classical music.) Over the 12 songs of the album (and perhaps 216 notes), there is “a gorgeous unsettledness that resists the drift into background music," (Missing Piece Group.)

The conversation flows around the fixed numbers of baseball, the numerology of 216, the creative use of loops and delay, and the sounds of the Blues in other traditional music around the world. Brad Barr plays remotely for the Soundcheck Podcast, and there’s even a gong. Set list: “Ancient Calendars,” “Baseball,” “Your Dad’s Awake”

Watch "Ancient Calendars":

Watch "Baseball":

Watch "Your Dad's Awake":

Finnish composers Tapani Rinne (tenor sax, clarinet) and Juha Maki-Patola (keyboards and electronics) skate between jazz, neo-classical, and ambient music, leaning heavily on improvisation and electronic processing for their collaborative album, Open. These two veteran musicians – saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer Tapani Rinne has been releasing records since the 1980’s while Juha Maki-Patola is a producer, musician, and engineer – connected online via Instagram during the pandemic, and began to share files. They talk about reverb, ice-swimming for health, and share some of the Nordic-seeming, spacious, immersive, and stunning results of their music-making, remotely.  – Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Brevity,” “Still”

Watch "Brevity":

Watch "Still":

Open by Tapani Rinne & Juha Mäki-Patola

Bluegrass quintet Yonder Mountain String Band dips into rock, prog, and improvisational music for their latest record, Get Yourself Outside. The band - founding members guitarist Adam Aijala, bassist Ben Kaufmann and banjoist Dave Johnston, plus fiddle player Allie Kral (who joined in 2015) along with new multi-instrumentalist Nick Piccininn - began writing the album remotely during the pandemic, collaborating virtually across time zones. The sound is entirely acoustic (and without drums) with foot-stomping sections of shred and solo-trading. Additionally, all five members sing, trading leads, and the vocal harmonies are rich and varied. Yonder Mountain String Band plays remotely from a permanent installation called Meow Wolf, in Colorado. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “I Just Can’t” “No Leg Left” “Into the Fire”

Watch "I Just Can't:

Watch "No Leg Left":

Watch "Into the Fire":

Guitarist Shane Parish of the avant instrumental jazz-mathpunk band Ahleuchatistas, is also an educator, arranger, composer, and podcaster. Lately, as a solo artist, he has mined the world of folk music – specifically “weird old Americana” and  “traditional music filtered through one guitarist’s non-traditional subjectivity,” (Bandcamp)

Shane Parish's most recent musical adventures on a new record called Liverpool are based around spacious, moody, unexpected arrangements of sea shanties for electric guitar and looping station. As he explains, the sea shanties happened to be a tangent of his podcast covering the Liverpudlian band, Echo & the Bunnymen. Now based in Athens, Georgia, Parish treats us to some remote performances of these tunes. 

Set List: “Black-Eyed Susan” “Haul Away Joe” “Rio Grande”

Watch "Blackeyed Susan":

Watch "Haul Away Joe":

Watch "Rio Grande":

Watch "Randy Dandy O":

The appealingly danceable music of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, or OMD, as the trailblazing synth-driven electronic band came to be known, has delighted and charmed listeners for decades. They formed in the late 1970's, greatly inspired by Kraftwerk, and with influences ranging from CAN to Barry White. Their string of breakout hits stretched through the 1980's, like "Electricity," "Tesla Girls," & "So In Love," while their song, "If You Leave," written specifically for the John Hughes film, Pretty In Pink, was also a huge hit. The unusual OMD blend is one of melody and melancholia, created with keyboards, synths, sexy saxophone, and drums, while never straying too far from the dance club and pop radio. The band reformed in 2006, and with the 2017 release of their third album, The Punishment of Luxury, Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys - OMD - performed in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)