NPR Music

The Wood Brothers appear on Mountain Stage, recorded live in Charleston, W.Va. Masters of soulful folk, siblings Chris and Oliver Wood are no strangers to music; Chris Wood is also one third of the genre-busting Medeski Martin And Wood. Growing up in Boulder, Colorado, their father, an alumnus of the legendary Cambridge, Mass., folk scene of the late '50s, encouraged his sons to play music.

"I went with him to dinner / and didn't even pay / and then he called me dude the next day!" sings Angelica Garcia to a giant papier-mâché monster in her new video for the song "Orange Flower." Garcia is from Los Angeles but relocated with her family to small town Virginia, where she found herself, seventeen and alone with all the time in the world to make music without judgement.

In honor of MTV's 35th birthday Monday, the network has launched MTV Classic, a new channel featuring programming from the '90s and '00s. On the same day, we also wish a happy birthday to NPR Music and Pop Culture Happy Hour's Stephen Thompson, who celebrates with an interview on All Things Considered about how MTV Classic is redefining which popular culture fits into the current environment for nostalgia.

From the first note of The Marcus King Band's self-titled Fantasy Records debut, you can hear that this guy is an old soul. It might be a surprise, then, to learn that the singer and guitarist is only 22 years old. King grew up in South Carolina, where he played sideman to blues musicians and honed his formidable talent.

Violent Femmes' self-titled debut album spoke to hordes of teenagers and college kids when it came out in 1983. The record's acoustic-rock sound, lead singer and songwriter Gordon Gano's brash yet vulnerable teenage snark and his delightfully shocking language made it an album to embrace as if only a few knew about it. Four years after its release, Violent Femmes went gold without ever having appeared on the Billboard album charts — and after 10 years, it went platinum.

The music of Kevin Morby is fairly straightforward and acoustic for the most part, with traditional, folk-based rock at its core. The mystery and intensity lies in the lyrics. His biting song "I Have Been To The Mountain," performed here at the Tiny Desk and on his 2016 album Singing Saw, was inspired by the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner at the hands of a New York City police officer.

That man lived in this town

Till that pig took him down

And have you heard the sound

Slowly but surely, Lubomyr Melnyk is getting noticed. This summer, the enigmatic Ukrainian-born pianist, who looks like Rasputin's doppelgänger, released illirion on Sony Classical.