Alabama Shakes’ “Hold On” Video

You don’t need a fancy music video when you sound like this! Here’s Brittany Howard and the rest of the Alabama-based blues band Alabama Shakes, whose debut album, Boys & Girls, is due out April 10 and is (still) streaming in full on NPR.

Plus they’ve got a cute genesis story: in high school, Brittany approached classmate/future bandmate Zac Cockrell, because “I just knew that he played bass and that he wore shirts with cool bands on them that nobody had heard of.”

Elsewhere, 44 years ago: Janis Joplin, “Piece of My Heart.”