Music

The girl group Reparata and the Delrons worked its forward-looking magic on songs like "Captain Of Your Ship," "Boys and Girls," "Shoes," and "Whenever a Teenager Cries." The band became far more popular overseas than in America, however.

Echoing music from the 1950s and '60s, Pay the Devil is the new album from Van Morrison. The album has Morrison reprising songs made famous by Hank Williams, Webb Pierce and Connie Smith.

Drummer Paul Motian has spent more than 50 years in music, working with jazz luminaries like Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk. At 75, he has a new CD of bebop jazz: Garden of Eden, featuring his own band.

Guitarist and singer Ali Farka Toure of Mali died March 7 at the age of 66. Farka Toure was a booster of Mali's march toward independence.

The British music press is hailing a new band, the Arctic Monkeys, as being as big as the Beatles — or at least as big as Oasis. The first-week release of the band's debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, sold over 118,000 copies.

The video-sharing Web site YouTube.com has changed the way some people see the Internet. But it's also changing how people hear vintage artists, from the late Wilson Pickett to the up-and-coming Arctic Monkeys.

The Joy of Cooking, a band led by two women out of Berkeley, Calif., in the late 1960s, is enjoying something of a revival. The group's brand of folk-rock included elements of jazz, blues and Latin music.

The legendary soul scene in Miami that had its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s is the subject of a new retrospective. Eccentric Soul: The Deep City Label the imprint that discovered Betty Wright, Paul Kelly, and Clarence "Blowfly" Reid.

First Impressions of Earth is the third album by the Strokes. The record offers some self-criticism — and some frantic career adjustment in the midst of the music. The Strokes begin a 17-city tour on March 3.

The Minus 5 is the newest album by singer-songwriter Scott McCaughey.