Music

The Welsh sextet Los Campesinos! has put out five albums since 2006, many of them with titles that don't seem destined to soar to the top of pop's generally lighthearted charts; We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed and Hello Sadness are just a couple of the band's record names. Lead singer Gareth David says the tone of the band's new album, No Blues, reflects a step in a more optimistic direction.

To find out about up-and-coming local bands for our Sense of Place stop in Detroit, we went straight to one of the city's best-known sources: Ann Delisi, host of Ann Delisi's Essential Music on NPR member station WDET-FM.

His name would spin around and around on the vinyl, the writer of a thousand songs: Doc Pomus. As the man behind smash records including Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas," Ray Charles' "Lonely Avenue" and The Drifters' "This Magic Moment," he shaped the early sound of rock 'n' roll.

When Primal Scream started recording their most recent album, lead singer Bobby Gillespie told us, they wanted to create "a sprawling, psychedelic epic of a record." Having written enough material to make a few new records, it's clear the Glaswegian dance-rock icons haven't dwelled on past successes. New songs like "It's Alright, It's OK" are strong reminders of the group's talent.

You can see the rest of Primal Scream's session at KCRW.com.

World Cafe's Sense of Place visit to Detroit continues this Thursday with a session from the Electric Six, a venerable sextet with a sound that manages to encompass elements of garage, disco, punk rock, new wave and metal.

For another dose of Sense of Place: Detroit, we revisit an archived studio session from 2009 Rodríguez. The Motor City folk rocker's albums from the '70s, Cold Fact and Coming from Reality, were being re-released at the time of this interview. While those records became huge hits in South Africa several years after their initial U.S. release, back in Detroit, Rodriguez was completely unaware of his fame until decades later.

Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy is back with another covers project. This time its for music by The Kinks. Meloy began releasing Colin Meloy Sings cover EPs in 2005 to coincide with his various solo tours.

Continuing this week's feature Sense of Place: Detroit, we welcome The Hounds Below to the World Cafe. Even before the popular garage rock band The Von Bondies started to dissolve in 2009, lead singer Jason Stollsteimer was already writing the poppier songs that make up the repertoire of the Hounds. Stollsteimer committed to the new band in 2011; the group released its debut, You Light Me Up In The Dark, the following year.