Music

Do you need a break from your regular music playlists? Then open up this video, hit play, and drop it into a background tab. Jorf assembled this epic 10-hour and 53-minute mix of 227 tracks programmed by various chiptune musicians and played with the classic 8-bit sounds of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The always amazing Sheryl Crow and her ensemble stopped by NPR Music’s studios to perform a true mini concert, playing seven tunes, including classics like All I Wanna Do, A Change Would Do You Good, and If It Makes You Happy, along with tracks off of her collaborative album Threads.

Published by Taschen, Michael Ochs’ hardcover 1,000 Record Covers showcases a thousand of the most beautiful and memorable vinyl record cover sleeves from the 1960’s to the 1990’s. Makes a great coffee table book for any music lover.

This amazing gadget for guitarists takes the analog sounds of your instrument and layers them with thick synthesized enhancements. The Boss Synth SY-1000 pedalboard gives guitars a whole new range of capability, with its sophisticated sound engine, and the ability to produce a mix of rich acoustic and electric tones.

A few years back, we learned about musician and artist Andy Thurlow’s collection of unique musical instruments, known as The Anarchestra. Documentarian Daniel Wolverton of Special Head returns to visit with Andy and check out some of the strange and wonderful noise makers he’s built in the past few years.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, we can officially play Christmas music without feeling too guilty about it. If you’re tired of traditional carols, then sit back and rock out to Leo Moracchioli’s very special edition of Jimmy Boyd’s jolly little ditty I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.

You will be RickRoll’d by this video. But that’s okay, because the guy doing the RickRolling is none other than Rick Astley himself, with a great, stripped back performance of the track that everyone has accidentally heard at least once in their life, Never Gonna Give You Up. From BBC Music’s Radio 2 Piano Room.

Daft Punk are true maestros, but so much of what they’ve achieved wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the funk, soul, and disco songs which provided sampling material for so many of their tunes. Tuneid compares some original tracks with Daft Punk’s remixes.

The members of Japan’s electro-pop band and dance crew World Order may have changed over the years, but they’ve still got amazing choreography, as is proven by their latest video, which includes some new moves, along with their crowd favorite robotic walk.

Punk Rock Factory has a knack for giving pop songs new life as pop-punk versions. Here, they take the 1997 Hanson mega-hit MMMBop and give the jibberish song an edge it previously lacked. From the album The Wurst Is Yet to Come, which packs 10 great covers.

Sesame Street’s The Count sings along with NY polka-punk band Gogol Bordello’s track Start Wearing Purple, a song about growing old and going senile, which seems rather ironic for a vampire who is likely immortal.

The Smash Mouth track All Star has been covered in just about every possible way, but we can say with certainty that we’ve never heard it played on melons converted into wind instruments. Now, we can check that one off of the list, courtesy of improvised instrument maker Pupsi.

Musicians Aaron Grooves and Snubby J teamed up for this lively cover version of the track Megalovania from the game Undertale, performing it on a Blue Man Group-inspired PVC pipe marimba, also known as RimbaTubes. We also spotted Snubby and Heather Freed’s great pipe and harp cover of Paint It Black.

The members of the jazz collective Snarky Puppy turned in a downright funky mix of keyboards, horns, bass, guitar, violin, and percussion during their appearance at the NPR Music offices. They performed their instrumental tracks Tarova and Xavi, the latter’s complex rhythms with the assistance of the audience.

We’ve all been there at one point or another. You’re feeling off, and you’ve got an unusual mix of symptoms that you can’t quite figure out. Swedish physician and novelty musician Henrik Widegren reminds us about the worst possible thing you can do when you’re sick. From the album Medical Melodies And Surgical Songs.

The dulcimer usually is associated with the kind of music you’d hear at a renaissance festival. But musician Sam Edelston believes the stringed instrument is “among the world’s coolest.” Listen up as he plays some truly rockin’ cover versions from the Ramones, Black Sabbath, and David Bowie.

Take a few minutes out of your day and tune into Rob Landes‘ mega-medley, in which the violinist compiles 100 great pieces of music that chronicle the history of video game soundtracks. See how many you remember. That Crash Bandicoot theme gets us every time.

Judging by their name and their musical prowess, the four members of 40 Fingers have all of their digits intact, and that makes this acoustic guitar medley of Disney songs just that much sweeter. It’s a wonderfully warm bit of ear candy for fans of The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Tarzan, Hercules, and Beauty and the Beast.

Expressive E’s keyboard gives musicians an incredible amount of expressiveness, with each key capturing subtle movements that influence pitch, loudness, and many other attributes. It works in concert with a robust sound engine by Haken Audio to produce amazingly warm and enveloping sounds. It also works as a MIDI controller.

Inspired by a mechanical drum-playing machine designed by Leonardo Da Vinci, this LEGO music maker by Giuseppe Acito uses a series of pegs placed onto a spinning wheel to trigger sound sequences as its “fingers” press keys connected to synthesizers.

The Flaming Lips’ ringleader Wayne Coyne loves Christmas, though it’s hard to tell from this surreal “Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth” video, an homage (sorta) to the famous David Bowie/Bing Crosby duet. The track was recorded live at Coyne’s Pink Floor Studios in Oklahoma City, and arrives as a single 11/29/19.

Thanks to the arcane copyright policing on YouTube, remixers like Jonny Wilson of Eclectic Method have found it harder to post content. His solution, keep the sound snippets so short that nobody can recognize them. His mashup of Red Hot Chili Peppers tracks maintains all of their texture, but none of their melodies.

Melodicka Bros ask the question, “What if John Denver came from a different universe to bring us some electro cyberpunk industrial synthwave sci-fi futuristic metal vibes?” They answer it with a wild arrangement of Take Me Home, Country Roads that sounds like something Depeche Mode might have recorded.

While musician Lord Vinheteiro claims he bought the smallest piano in the world, we beg to differ. Still the idea of a normal height upright piano with just five keys is quite the oddity. While we admire the construction, it sounds quite horrible.

Men at Work’s Australian anthem Down Under is one of the most jangly and upbeat pop songs of all time. But in the interest of leaving no musical stone unturned, resident metalhead Leo Moracchioli still managed to turn it into an angry hard rock track.

We already know what it sounds like when 30 jew’s harp players perform a song together. Now hear how its unique and twangy sounds can be used to play techno music, courtesy of musician Ildar Gimadiev, who had us dancing to the beat by the end. (Thanks OrionFyre!)

Solo bass player Tommy Lee Depp takes on Simon & Garfunkel’s timeless 1964 classic The Sound of Silence, giving the track a smooth new texture that will stir your soul just as much as the original.

Break of Reality performs an emotive orchestration of Soundgarden’s 1994 hit track with three cellos providing the rich melody and harmonies, and a djembe on the rhythm track. While no string instrument can replace Chris Cornell’s vocals, we still got the feels.

There are a zillion covers of Billie Eilish’s hit Bad Guy out there, but we’re going to have to give our vote to Dan Davidson’s group DD and the Butterlovers and their bluegrass version. We have no idea what the deal is with their outfits, but we still say “yee-haw!”

Musician Clint Robinson puts on his best red cardigan and comfiest sneakers to rock out a death metal version of Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, the theme song from the classic kid’s program Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. We’re pretty sure Clint has scared all the children off of his block.