Photo of Jessica Lea Mayfield taken from The Key

We’ve got a week of some of today’s most exciting artists slated to hit your airwaves on World Cafe this week. Check it out:

Our World Cafe: Next artist is from Denver. She is Esme Patterson and she wears many hats, playing in the band Paper Bird and since 2012 releasing solo albums.  Her new disc is called Woman to Woman.  It answers famous songs by male writers with songs based on what the female characters might have said if they had a voice. She explains it in this Ted Talk.  We’ll hear her response to Elvis Costello’s “Alison” and The Beach Boys “Caroline No”.

Tuesday, Noah Gundersen from Seattle will be on the show.  He is a singer-songwriter who, even though he didn’t grow up in a secular household, has embraced pop music with a vengeance since he started writing leading to his new album Ledges.  

It’s the evolving singer Jessica Lea Mayfield on Wednesday. Moving away from the R&B influences on her albums overseen by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, she is now presenting her more punk rock side. Check out Jessica’s style before  and after.

 Fan of the punk rock band Against Me!? Loud, fast and often political, Against Me! Used to be led by Tom Gabel and now led by Laura Jane Grace. Same person. Tune in Thursday for a fascinating discussion of Laura’s coming out as a transgendered person, what it means for her band and especially for her as an individual.

 Hour two features an interview with Holly George-Warren who has an amazingly complete new biography A Man Called Destruction  about the late Alex Chilton (of Big Star and Box Tops fame). The Replacements wrote a song about him.

 Friday is special as well with an extensive session with Sharon Van Etten with music from her new album Are We There. It even includes a demonstration of the Omnichord!