NPR Music

Cassandra Wilson was once described by Time magazine as "America's best singer." Wilson was born in segregated Mississippi — also the birthplace of the blues — but she's always been on a journey to explore other sounds and influences.

Life's most profound moments are often its most ordinary: the sound a key makes when you unlock your front door; the feel of your own weight as you rise in the morning or the simple act of breathing. The Los Angeles-based singer Simone White explores the deeper meanings of otherwise mundane moments like these in a new video for the song "Flowers In May," from her latest album Silver Silver.

Fun. is in the middle of quite a run. For six weeks this spring, the band had the No. 1 song in the country with "We Are Young," an anthemic pledge of drunken solidarity that has appeared in countless commercials and TV shows, and dominated radio playlists and sales charts since March (it's still in the top five).

• This week, Gustavo Dudamel was in Scotland to visit Raploch, Stirling, the "former haunt of notorious crime-clan ­matriarch Big Mags Haney and once so educationally deprived it was dubbed a 'higher-free zone.'" It now is the home of Big Noise, a classical music project for kids run by Sistema Scotland.