Music

From time to time, a horde of silver jewelry coins and ingots is unearthed somewhere in northern Scotland or eastern England, where Vikings once held sway. What would these Norsemen raiders have made of our haul of Nordic music?

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Roots music band The Trishas make their first appearance on Mountain Stage, recorded live at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Although none of the women in The Trishas are actually named Trisha, each of them sings, plays and writes her own music.

• In the New York Times this week, Anthony Tommasini has a series in both print and video about those microcosmic musical moments like "a fleeting passage, a short series of chords, some unexpected shift in a melodic line — when something occurs that just grabs us." What links these diverse bits from Chopin to Puccini to Mahler together?

You always remember the first time you heard one of Regina Spektor's songs. She harnesses such a wide range of emotions expertly — and even more so in her live performances. Spektor is one of a kind, and "The Party" is a perfect example.

You can watch the entire performance over at KCRW.com.

Kat Edmonson makes her first appearance on Mountain Stage, recorded on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown. Originally from Houston, Edmonson relocated to Austin, where her classic jazz-inspired singing soon made her one of the town's most talked about musicians.

The drummer Pete La Roca, a top freelance drummer during New York's post-bop heyday in the 1950s and '60s, died early this morning in New York. The cause was lung cancer, according to Randa Kirshbaum, a former girlfriend. He was 74 years old.

I first saw this guitar and drums duo last month, in their home town of Asheville, N.C. during Moogfest. The festival is often thought of as just an electronic music festival and it does skew in that direction, but it primarily celebrates the creative souls in music and in doing so honors the spirit of electronic music pioneer Robert Moog. The sonic palette of guitarist Shane Perlowin and drummer Ryan Oslance certainly fits that description.