Fresh from last week’s announcement that they’ve collected five nominations at this year’s Grammy Awards and currently engaged in their first bona fide UK arena tour, Akron, Ohio (they’re so proud they name the place on their T-shirts) duo the Black Keys have truly arrived in the big leagues.

Ageing rockers The Rolling Stones celebrated 50 years in the industry by performing to a packed London crowd for the first time since 2007.

French Afro collective Fanga and Morocco’s Abdullah Guinea have superimposed gnawa roots music on to 1970s funk so successfully as to make these two disparate forms seem as if they belong together.

High-concept stuff – as in heavenly – in which the Nashville songwriter Phil Madeira co-opts a posse of notables into a project predicated on the idea that “God is love” (as opposed to the moralist of “crazy TV preachers”).

Integrity intact, this blast from the past heads to the future

Better known as one-third of post-rockers State River Widening, David Sheppard here collaborates with producer Chris Leary as Snow Palms, a percussion-based unit whose creations owe much to the mallet music of Steve Reich, Moondog and Indonesian gamelan orchestras.

Main image: eclectic bronze shoe door stop by Tom Dixon, £145, Selfridges; selection of frames, from £5, John Lewis

His beloved black Fender Stratocaster is expected to fetch £125,000 at auction

There’s a feeling of excitement in the air. “It was never this busy for Prince,” gasps a man by the bar, and “I really hope it’s not all hype says a stiletto-clad woman in a scouse accent.

More than 30 years after this short-lived trio's landmark albums Magico and Folk Songs, ECM has unearthed a live recording from a 1981 concert in Munich.

Dream pop duo Beach House are covered in smoke and coloured light, reduced to mere silhouettes on the stage. Victoria Legrand’s big, shaggy hair is the only discernable feature as she bobs and whispers. She is sometimes heard, sometimes obscured by Alex Scally’s rippling, dreamy guitar chords.

A well-crafted ode in honour of self-obsession

How great it is to discover belatedly the Brazilian legend Maia, a teenage illegal immigrant to the US who took Sly Stone and the Isleys' 1970s funk back home to Rio, blending it with samba, Afrobeat and even reggae.

It is Grizzly Bear vocalist Ed Droste's birthday, and the crowd break into a haphazard round of 'Happy Birthday'. This should please the Brooklyn four-piece - they publicly moaned that an audience in Newcastle was too quiet last week.