[From all Music.com-Timothy Monger] While she is most often identified as a soul singer, Danielle Ponder's versatile music is infused with bits of gospel, trip-hop, blues, R&B, and alt rock. A former public defender from Rochester, New York, the 
singer/songwriter spent years playing music on the side before doubling down on her music career in the late 2010s. It was an unusual path to success, but one that allowed her to develop a unique sound full of depth and command. After signing with the Future Classic label, Ponder released her debut album, Some of Us Are Brave, in 2022.
The story of the Dave Matthews Band is one that can only happen in America with our pop culture media fascination. Here is how they happened. Songwriter David John Matthews, working in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a bartender at Miller's bar in 1990, became a friend of a lawyer, Ross Hoffman. Hoffman convinced the usually reserved Matthews to record a demo of the few songs he had written. Hoffman hoped Matthews could shop the songs in order to find other musicians to perform on some studio work with him. Hoffman encouraged Matthews to approach 
Carter Beauford, a local drummer in Charlottesville. Beauford had been in several bands and was playing on a jazz show on BET (Black Entertainment Television).
After hearing Matthews' demo, Carter agreed to spend some time playing the drums, both inside and outside the studio. Matthews also approached LeRoi Moore, another local jazz musician who often performed with the John D'earth Quintet, to join them. Moore skeptically listened to the demo, but liked what he heard and decided that he too would give Matthews a chance.
The trio began working on Matthews' songs in 1991. Matthews recollects that, "...the reason I went to Carter was not because I needed a drummer, but because I thought he was the baddest thing I'd ever seen and LeRoi, it wasn't because I desperately wanted a saxophone, it was because this guy just blew my mind. At this jazz place I used to bartend at Miller's, I would just sit back and watch him. I would be serving the musicians fat whiskeys and they'd be getting more and more hosed, but no matter how much, he used to still blow my mind. And it was the sense that everyone played from their heart. And when we got together and they asked, 'What do you want the music to sound like?' I said, 'I know this is a song I wrote and I like what you guys play, so I want you to play the way you react to my song.' There was a lot of breaking of our inhibitions."
[From All Music.com-John Bush] Guatemalan singer/songwriter Ricardo Arjona is among the most successful Latin artists. He has sold more than 80 million records and established a global reputation for his often poignant and always topical songwriting, 
which addresses subjects ranging from romance and sexuality to violence, racism, poverty, and the plight of immigrants. He possesses a crystalline, expressive baritone with a completely committed performing style, whether he's in a studio or on-stage. Arjona is an artist first and an entertainer second, and he has pursued many directions over the course of his career. Early recordings, such as his 1992 synth-driven breakthrough, Animal Nocturno, communicated his sophisticated lyrics inside infectious melodies. 1994's Historias showcased 14 songs in as many styles, ranging from rock and R&B to acoustic pop, folk, and even country. Since 2000's rhythmically adventurous Galeria Caribe, he has placed a dozen albums on the Latin and Latin Pop charts and ten more in the Anglocentric Top 200. Arjona made the transition to streaming charts, as well. Singles such as 2012's "I Wanna Be Around," in duet with Tony Bennett, placed inside the jazz Top 40, while 2017's "Ella" made the streaming Top Ten. Blanco, recorded at London's Abbey Road Studios, was released in 2020 and followed by the simultaneously recorded Negro in 2021; they were issued as Blanco y Negro.
[From All Miusic.com-Stephen Thomas Erlewine] A plaintive, quivering country troubadour indebted to the literary side of Red Dirt country -- he wrote a song saluting Evan Felker of the Turnpike Troubadours, one of the genre's leading lights of the 2010s -- Zach Bryan began carving out a career for 
himself while he was still enlisted in the Navy. He recorded his 2019 debut DeAnn during a break in his service and it, along with videos he posted online, helped him cultivate an audience that crested with the 2020 release of Elisabeth and its accompanying single "Heading South." Bryan capitalized on this burgeoning popularity with American Heartbreak, a sprawling 2022 triple album that marked his major-label debut and mainstream breakthrough: it debuted at number one on Billboard's Country Albums chart.