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In 1985, the British rock quartet Prefab Sprout released its second album Steve McQueen. Influenced as much by Tin Pan Alley as new wave, the record was both hailed and panned by British and American critics alike. Twenty-two years later, age — and a deluxe re-release — has served it well.

Drummer Mick Fleetwood explores the resurgence of blues in America, thanks to an ongoing interest in British blues-rock bands like The Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac — which is touring again after a five-year hiatus. Fleetwood says he hopes to bring the group back to its blues roots.

With an exotic fiddle, a viola, a classical guitar and a drum kit, the quartet called QQQ creates something like Appalachian folk music — albeit filtered through Brooklyn experimentalism and rural Norwegian flavor. The band plays a special session in Studio 4A.

One of the most soaring voices in the world has taken a dive, but we don't mean that unkindly. This fall in Berlin, Placido Domingo, the great tenor, is singing the title role in Simon Boccanegra as a baritone. It's a testament to his ambitious spirit.

Last spring on its MySpace page, the Brooklyn experimental rock band Parts & Labor asked fans to send sound samples to put on the group's new album. Parts & Labor used every single one, often blurring the line between instruments and samples.

Roy Orbison didn't really find his identity until he signed with a small Nashville label, Monument, in 1959. Ed Ward looks at the 17 singles that put him, and the Monument label, on the map.

Elvis Presley is constantly being discovered by new generations, and by older fans in new stages of life. Critic Milo Miles talks about the surprise rewards he found while listening to the new reissue Elvis Is Back! — and during his first visit to Graceland in Memphis.

A new book argues that Motown was a step in the evolution of the American popular song, a tradition reaching back to songwriters like Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Cole Porter.

Beck is something of a musical chameleon — he's been called a cracked folkie, a hip-hop joker, a sonic innovator, even a pop star. His latest CD finds him in all these guises, and more. Full of narcotic funk and psychedelic rock, it may well be a classic.

Hazmat Modine is a New York band fronted by two harmonica players. Their repertoire starts with blues and branches into various genres of Americana, but always with a difference: tuba bass lines, lacings of Eastern European hammer dulcimer, or Tuvan throat singing. The group's debut CD is Bahamut — reviewer Banning Eyre says its charm lies in how it lends an air of mystery and other-worldliness to familiar sounds.