Years of playing in the same converted room have left Bondo convinced the band is a thing separate from the four people in it.

The host of Slate’s ‘Hit Parade’ joins The Tonearm Podcast to discuss the two pools of data that keep the Billboard Hot 100 honest, the bundling schemes that turned the album chart into a promotional shell game, and the cultural rules that decide who country radio will play.

Settled in the Berlin district of Lichtenrade after more than a decade of constant movement, hackedepicciotto discuss the making of ‘Lichtung’ — the German lyrics, the piano de Picciotto avoided, Hacke’s return to teenage experiments, and “Draussen,” a storm song with a home at its center.

The Berlin-based French producer discusses ‘Bow and Arrow,’ a record assembled from improvised cello and randomized sample slices, and the working life behind it, in which every day at the computer is a straw pulled blind and most of them come up short.

Raised in the Shenandoah Valley and jazz-trained at Berklee, Wellington discusses old-time repertoire, the constant calibration between dancing and playing, and the making of the solo album ‘Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still.’

The four-time Grammy winner on the new Social Science album, trusting collaborators before they’ve earned it, and calling herself a frustrated drummer.

The Hit Parade host on what better data revealed about hit songs, why country radio guards its gate, and his refusal to believe in guilty pleasures.

Synthesist Danalogue (The Comet Is Coming, Soccer96) on his solo debut Teleportations, vintage synths, sci-fi world-building, and imagination as hope.

Suzanne Ciani on CIANI/ORKEST, her live album pairing the Buchla with the 50-piece Metropole Orkest, quadraphonic sound, and saying yes at eighty.

Trumpeter Steven Bernstein on his chordless trio ResoNation Trio, Scotty Hard’s dub reinvention Ultra Resonance, and why he still plays Levon Helm’s music.