"What am I gonna sing?" Erykah Badu asked the audience with a smile and a shrug. The challenge facing the performer: transforming one of her barely-still-classifiable-as-neo-soul songs into a country take.

There's a pivotal scene in Walk the Line when Sun records founder Sam Phillips dares Johnny Cash to sing one song that people would always remember, one that "would let God know how [he] felt about [his] time here on Earth." But what if Phillips dared Cash to sing 10 or even 12?

Is synergy the new trend in metal? Arguable kings of the genre, Mastodon, have joined with Dethklok -- the real-life version of the animated band from the Adult Swim show Metalocalypse -- as co-headliners on a 34-city tour sponsored by the offbeat TV network.

When actor Ryan Gosling brought his band, Dead Man’s Bones, to Boston's Middle East Club for the opening of its first-ever tour Wednesday night, the place was sold out and every song was whooped, hollered, and ecstatically applauded by the crowd, even though the album dropped just last week. Sycophantic celeb-loving? Or respect for Gosling’s musicianship? Bit of both, seemed like.

Monsters of Folk -- the indie supergroup featuring M. Ward, My Morning Jacket's Jim James, and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis -- gave the crowd at Vancouver's Commodore ballroom their money's worth with an epic two-and-a-half-hour set on the opening night of their U.S. tour.

Lenny Kravitz came to the Fillmore in New York City Sunday night to blow out the birthday candles for Let Love Rule, the breakthrough debut album he released 20 years ago.

Brought to the stage by director Michael Mayer, the man behind 2006's surprise Broadway hit Spring Awakening, the stage-musical version of Green Day's American Idiot is currently enjoying a trial run in the band's native East Bay, and early indicators were promising: Ushers in the Berkeley Repertory Theater handed out earplugs before the show -- what is this, My Bloody Valentine?

"Giants Stadium: The House That Bruce Built," read one proud fan's sign. Friday night Bruce Springsteen returned one final time to the 70,000-seat New Jersey venue to tear it all down.

"The whole idea of this tour is to write the new Travis record," announced Fran Healy as he and the group's guitarist Andy Dunlop launched their back-to-basics North American tour Thursday at San Francisco's ornate Swedish American Hall.

Now a major-label act with U.K. chart hits whose bluesy garage-punk style has been streamlined by producer Rick Rubin, the Gossip are no longer underground scrappers. But somebody forgot to inform vocalist Beth Ditto, who was her old exuberant subcultural self when the band began its first U.S. tour in three years early Wednesday night at Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club.