In the six years since Irish indie film phenom Once was released, star Glen Hansard (already noted for his work with folk rock band The Frames) has racked up an Academy Award, a Grammy nomination, eight Tony Awards for the film’s Broadway translation, and been handpicked for a number of national tours, including two with now good friend Eddie Vedder

For 736 and one-half hours, a woman rigidly sits on a chair in a brightly-lit gallery within New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She does not allow herself to eat, to speak, to stretch out or to rest in any other way.

Take This Waltz is actress-turned-director Sarah Polley’s impressive and affecting third feature, an unsentimentally realistic and often funny look at long-term relationships. Margot (Michelle Williams) and Lou (Seth Rogen) are young and comfortably married, two writers whose everyday lives have lapsed into a complacent routine.

This collection of Aretha Franklin singles, drawn primarily from the 1980s, manages to sound, at times, both fresh and retro cool. Even though nobody really needs reminding of Aretha Franklin’s brilliance, nor should we pretend that by 1980 her most seminal work wasn’t more than a decade behind her, the bulk of the material on Knew You Were Waiting is a total joy to listen to.

The Knack has been very unfairly defined in the public consciousness by its one big hit, 1979’s “My Sharona.” However, that track, off the band’s debut, Get The Knack, of the same year, is highly unrepresentative of who The Knack was as a band.

For more than 10 years, Texas songwriter Salim Nourallah has been mixing his love of The Beatles and ‘70s power pop with a storytelling folk approach to create nuanced, hummable pop music.

If you’re familiar with Anthony Bourdain’s other work—nonfiction (Kitchen Confidential, etc.), fiction (Bone in the Throat), various TV shows, and even his speaking engagements—you may find him funny, opinionated, a little sick in the head, and totally engaging and entertaining.

Andrew Bird is not one of those performers who makes the audience feel as though they’re part of the experience. Instead, the audience feels as though they’re lucky enough to be allowed to watch a very personal, private show.

After a bevy of 7-inch releases, incendiary live shows, and blog hype that’s gradually built to a fever pitch, DIIV have at last delivered their debut LP, Oshin. Upon first exposure, it doesn’t seem highly dissimilar to frontman Zachary Cole Smith’s other band and Captured Tracks labelmates Beach Fossils, with whom Smith plays guitar.