Punk

Several recent DVDs take up the history of punk music. Don Letts' Punk Attitude focuses on the ethos of teen rebellion, while All Dolled Up tells the story of the influential New York Dolls.

Our rock critic reviews two new albums: “Death by Sexy” by Eagles of Death Metal, and “Curses” by Rye Coalition.

Eugene Hütz is the charismatic front man of the gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello. The multinational, multiethnic group includes a violinist, guitarist, accordionist and bass player. Hütz himself hails from Ukraine; he appeared in the film Everything is Illuminated alongside Elijah Wood. Gogol Bordello's new album is Super Taranta.

Fresh Air's music critic Milo Miles considers the work of the art-punk band Sonic Youth; the group's 1988 album Daydream Nation has just been reissued in a deluxe double-CD edition.

Fresh Air's rock critic reviews Transmiticate, the debut album from Donita Sparks and the Stellar Moments. The Chicago-born Sparks co-founded the punk-grunge band L7.

Best known as founder and frontman for the Los Angeles punk band X, musician John Doe has always had a weakness for country music — and X's sound, in fact, sometimes had a twang to it. After that band's dissolution, Doe explored his countrified yearnings further, and in recent years he's turned in some eminently satisfying roots rock. With Country Club, Doe dives headlong into the genre, collaborating with the Canadian band the Sadies on a collection of classic covers originally recorded by titans like Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette and Willie Nelson.

Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles are a Boston-area quartet raised on punk rock and country music. Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews their new album, The Stars Are Out.

The Godfather of Punk has released a new album called Preliminaires, featuring standards like "Autumn Leaves" and "How Insensitive," as well as an original song inspired by Louis Armstrong.

A re-mastered, newly released back catalog of six albums by the Brit-punk band The Subhumans will remind you why people were knocked out by punk in the 1980s.

The Plimsouls, an L.A.-based band led by singer-songwriter Peter Case, performed extensively during the early '80s. The new release of a Plimsouls performance from Oct. 31, 1981 (called Live! Beg Borrow and Steal) leaves critic Ken Tucker feeling freshly enthusiastic about the continued vitality of The Plimsouls' music.

The frontman for the pop-punk band Green Day details the group's early days in Berkeley an describes what it's been like to see American Idiot, a new Broadway musical based on one of his albums.

Tucker, a founding member of the band Sleater-Kinney, is back with a new group, The Corin Tucker Band, and an album called 1,000 Years. Rock critic Ken Tucker says the record has an "air of heavy but often beautiful melancholy."

Over the course of 40 years, Iggy Pop has changed from a noisy brat with seemingly no chance at stardom to a widely respected founder of punk. A new box set, Roadkill Rising, collects many of his unreleased bootlegs.

The New York City band Golem describes its music as punk-klezmer. On Tanz, they mange to find new ways to balance urban irreverence with folk tradition.

Parquet Courts is a Brooklyn by way of Texas band that has just released its new third record, Sunbathing Animal. The quartet has drawn comparisons to New York rock and punk acts as various as the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, and Sonic Youth, but rock critic Ken Tucker says this album proves Parquet Courts is an original.

Punk rock lives on the debut album by a new trio, Ex Hex. The album is called Rips, and it's at once a throwback to bands like the Ramones and the sound of something new. Fresh Air rock critic Ken Tucker says the three women who make up Ex Hex have created an exhilaratingly energetic piece of work.

"I think if I had been an accomplished songwriter I wouldn't have written 'You Really Got Me,'" Davies tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

Fresh Air rock critic Ken Tucker says that one of the best books he's ever read about punk rock is a new memoir by Viv Albertine.

Gordon co-founded Sonic Youth with Thurston Moore. When their marriage broke up in 2011, so did the band. Gordon talks about rebuilding her life, writing her memoir and her new band Body/Head.

The Waco Brothers recently released their first album of original material in more than a decade. Rock critic Ken Tucker says the music on Going Down in History is "urgent, precise and pointed."