The World Cafe

On Thursday's installment of World Cafe's Latin Roots series, Ernesto Lechner — co-host of the radio show The Latin Alternative — dives into balada, a romantic style of Latin music. Lechner starts by playing a couple of examples of the style from the late 1960s, when authentic balada drew from jazz and even the Brazilian genre of bossa nova. We'll also hear a modern rendition of the style from Babasónicos of Argentina.

Soulful roots-rock singer Jason Isbell has been writing revealing, introspective songs since his days in the Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers. After leaving the group in 2007, Isbell went on to record a string of studio albums with and without his new band, The 400 Unit. His hit "Alabama Pines" won Song of the Year honors at the 2012 Americana Music Awards.

Jason and his wife, fiddler and songwriter Amanda Shires, join host David Dye to discuss their new albums including Shires' recent release Down Fell The Doves. 

We're very excited to have Michael Franti return to WCBE for a live session during the Global Village! 

This segment, from Sept. 18, is part of our Best Of 2013 series, in which we revisit some of our most memorable interviews and performances of the year.

Neko Case's latest release is the autobiographical The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You.

Typhoon, the 11 piece band from Portland will be playing a few songs for us here at WCBE! If you missed them performing the night before at The Wexner Center with Radiation City...here's your chance for a special intimate performance !   They're out on the road in support of their brand  new release White Lighter and

will be making a stop in Columbus!

When actress Zooey Deschanel started recording with producer M. Ward as She & Him in 2006, it was easy to see it as a passing thing. With the duo releasing the third album-length installment of its ongoing collaboration this year — in addition to a holiday record titled A Very She & Him Christmas — it's now pretty clearly a long-haul project.

Zooey Deschanel and Matt Ward began their partnership in 2006 when they formed She & Him and issued their debut project Volume One in 2008.

The punchy L.A. indie-pop band Wildcat! Wildcat! is made up of three members who've been friends since middle school. They've released a couple of singles — including the latest, "Mr. Quiche" — and recently compiled them on a new EP. Hear a couple of the band's songs on this installment of World Cafe: Next.

New Orleans' Preservation Hall, the dirt-floor space off Bourbon Street, was founded in 1961 as a place for the elders of Crescent City jazz to play nightly. Today, World Cafe talks with Ben Jaffe; like his father Alan, who ran the space initially, Jaffe is a tuba player who guides the world-renowned band today.

Almost 20 years ago, the members of the Greyboy Allstars got together to play a record release party for DJ Greyboy and discovered a perfect fusion. Call it rare groove, acid jazz or Electric Boogaloo (as they named their 1995 debut album), guitarist Elgin Park, keyboardist Robert Walter, saxophonist Karl Denson and the rhythm section of Chris Stillwell and Aaron Redfield have a special sound. These Allstars still draw from '60s boogaloo on their new album, Inland Emperor.

We welcome British band Treetop Flyers to the World Cafe. They are a folk-rock five-piece that initially turned heads on the main stage of the 2011 Glastonbury Festival. They won the spot through an "emerging artist" competition. From there, they were signed to Loose Music in the U.K. and to Partisan Records in the U.S. and put out their debut full-length record, The Mountain Moves, in June of this year. Their music is very much inspired by California in the '70s, so it was not much of a stretch to decamp to Malibu to record their debut.

The Mountain Moves, British band Treetop Flyers' impressive debut, channels vintage California folk-rock.

The new documentary Muscle Shoals recalls how interracial harmony in tumultuous times made possible a new kind of music. Leading African-American artists traveled to North Alabama — not exactly a place they thought they'd be welcome in the civil rights era — to jam with an all-white crew of session players. In little rooms near the wide Tennessee River, they perfected soul and anticipated Southern rock.

If you were an indie-rock fan in the mid-1980s, then you undoubtedly stumbled upon Miracle Legion. In the post R.E.M. jangle-rock landscape, they called it "college rock" and the Connecticut-based Miracle Legion ruled. It happened again with his work on Nickelodeon's Adventures of Pete & Pete with the fake-band Polaris made up of Miracle Legion musicians.

Our World Cafe: Next artist this week is Royal Bangs, a band originally from Knoxville, Tennessee. The band formed in 2001 and had their first album released by The Black Keys' Patrick Carney on his own Audio Eagle Records in 2008. He actually discovered the band on MySpace.

The band is fronted by Ryan Schaefer and their new album, Brass, was produced by Carney. It's scheduled to be released on September 17, but you can hear two tracks from it on the World Cafe: Next podcast.

Singer-songwriter Mark Mulcahy returns with his fifth studio album, Dear Mark J. Mulcahy, I Love You.

Husband and wife, Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst make up the duo Shovels And Rope out of Charleston, S.C. 

Scottish dance-rock band Franz Ferdinand are back with its fourth album, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action. A year-and-a-half in the making, the record includes collaborations with members of Hot Chip and Peter Bjorn and John. In this episode of World Cafe, we speak with lead singer Alex Kapranos and drummer Paul Thomson, and the band treats us to a live set.