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Singer, songwriter and philanthropist Lou Rawls died Friday after a battle with cancer. Rawls' career spanned gospel, blues, jazz, pop and disco. For the last quarter century of his life, Rawls also devoted himself to educating black youth.

Pop legend Prince has a new triple-album release called Lotusflow3r. It features two solo albums by Prince and a debut album by Bria Valente, co-written and co-produced by Prince. Rock critic Ken Tucker has a review.

The band Modest Mouse has released their first album in four years. The group often referred to as the perfect indie-rock band suddenly finds itself enjoying pop success that had eluded it for 10 years. Mikel Jollett has a review of their new CD, Good News for People who Love Bad News.

A French-style '60s band has taken New York by storm. But most of the members of Les Sans Culottes are Americans. Their act is a musical takeoff on the French pop music of an era far more famous in America for the British invasion led by The Beatles.

The Norwegian acoustic pop duo Kings of Convenience once titled one of their albums Quiet Is the New Loud. They get even quieter on a new CD, Riot on Empty Street. Meredith Ochs has a review.

British singer-songwriter Bryan Ferry is probably best known as the frontman for Roxy Music, the experimental synth-pop band he founded in 1971. But over the years, in between his Roxy music, he's recorded albums devoted to songwriters he admires. The latest? It's called Dylanesque.

Grammy-winning singer and composer Cassandra Wilson has made a career out of using her jazz and blues skills to transform pop songs. On her latest album, Glamoured, Wilson applies her rich, husky voice to a variety of musical genres. NPR's Michelle Mercer has a review.

Host Steve Inskeep speaks with Jim Clupper, a librarian in Islamorada, Fla., about the town's monument to the victims of the nation's worst hurricane on record, which hit the Florida Keys in 1935. The memorial to the hundreds of victims is one of the sites featured in a book about not-so-famous, but noteworthy sites across the country catalogued in a book called James Dean Died Here: The Locations of America's Pop Culture Landmarks. (# Santa Monica Press; ISBN: 1891661310.)

The subway transformed the nation's largest city, and how the world viewed it. Over the decades, pop culture depictions of the subway have reflected the ever-changing image of the Big Apple. NPR's Robert Smith reports.

Texas singer/songwriter Tish Hinojosa has been charming audiences up and down the Rio Grande for years with her signature blend of traditional Mexican song structure, pop melodies, and socially-critical lyrics. It has been four years since her last collection of new material, but now she's back with a new CD, Sign of Truth.