Stephin Merritt wants to know if it’s snowing in Toronto. He already knows that it recently snowed in Vermont and Montreal, and that weather tends to travel east. His meteorological tab-keeping makes sense, considering he and his Magnetic Fields are about to tour their just-released album, Realism (Nonesuch).

It’s the end of an era. After 500 gigs in 10 years, Wavelength’s weekly Sunday series is over.

Laura Marling is feeling no pressure, even if she should be.

Who’d have thought the psych-folk pile, already teetering on the brink of over-saturation, would peak with Yeasayer’s second album? With the exception of opener The Children, which sounds like a forgotten Fever Ray track, Anand Wilder, Chris Keating and Ira Wolf Tuton have gone bigger, better and more cohesive.

There’s a high probability that you’ve already heard Saidah Baba Talibah sing and didn’t know it. The Toronto soul singer (and daughter of Canadian jazz and blues icon Salome Bey) has belted backing vocals for everyone from Maestro Fresh Wes to country singer Johnny Reid, and even put in three seasons with the Canadian Idol band. Her impressive resumé makes it all the more surprising that it’s only recently that she’s begun to focus on her own solo material.