Rock

Inspired by Sinn Sisamouth and other Cambodian stars of the '60s and '70s, brothers Zac and Ethan Holzman created a fusion cover band — complete with a former Cambodian pop star who had recently moved to Los Angeles.

Singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow performs three songs from her new album, Detours, plus a portion of a song from an early album that she persuaded the record company not to release.

Singer-composer Nick Cave composed the soundtrack for last year's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; he also wrote the screenplay and the soundtrack for The Proposition. Now, Cave has released a new CD with his band the Bad Seeds: Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!

The band R.E.M. has released its first album in four years, Accelerate. Critics have been describing the disc as a "comeback," saying it's the band's best album in ages. Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills join Terry Gross for a conversation.

Pop-rock singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow joins Terry Gross in the Fresh Air studios for an interview and live performance. Detours, her new album, is the most politically and personally outspoken record of her career.

Old friends Mick Jones, former lead guitarist of The Clash, and Tony James, once of the Billy Idol-fronted Generation X, have teamed up in a band called Carbon/Silicon. They've been giving away songs for free on their Web site, but their new album, The Last Post, is an official hard-copy CD.

Obligatory Villagers, the new jazz- and cabaret-inflected album from singer-songwriter Nellie McKay, features sassy tracks that touch on topics as diverse as feminism and zombies.

McKay, a sometime actress and stand-up comedian, made a splash in 2004 with a debut CD called Get Away From Me — a play on the title of Norah Jones' album Come Away With Me.

Last year, she co-starred in a revival of Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera alongside Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper.

McKay joins Terry Gross for a Fresh Air concert and conversation.

Writer-director Todd Haynes is responsible for an eclectic array of films, from the elegantly bio-paranoia drama Safe to the glam-rock celebration Velvet Goldmine and the Douglas Sirk homage Far From Heaven.

His latest experiment: I'm Not There, a kind of fantasia on the public personas of Bob Dylan. Six different actors — including Cate Blanchett — play the famously protean singer.

Once the drummer for the grunge band Nirvana, Dave Grohl formed Foo Fighters after the death of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain in 1994.

Foo Fighters' sixth album, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, includes a song Grohl wrote for two miners who, trapped in an Australia mine collapse, asked rescuers to send down an iPod loaded with Foo Fighters songs. Grohl sent them a note, then met with one of the miners after they were rescued.

During his heyday in the early 1970s, shock-rock icon Alice Cooper dressed like a ghoul with a gaunt face and mascara-streaked eyes. His hits included "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out" and "Welcome to My Nightmare." In a memoir — Alice Cooper: Golf Monster, he recounts how he used his obsession with golf to overcome his addiction to alcohol.

This interview was originally broadcast on May 17, 2007.