Punch Brothers  have a rare few weeks off from their North American tour, with their next show scheduled for the moe.down Festival in upstate New . . . Rockwood Music Hall for a solo set this Saturday night. The band was featured on the BBC World Service's flagship arts program The Strand yesterday.

If you think you’ve heard what the mandolin really sounds like, listen to Chris Thile play and your whole definition will change. After the . . . After an extensive tour throughout the country, the Punch Brothers went back into the studio and recorded Antifogmatic, released on June 15, 2010.

As noted yesterday in the Nonesuch Journal, Punch Brothers' latest Nonesuch album, Antifogmatic, was released on vinyl yesterday, while the band is . . . this weekend. Already on the road for a month now, Punch Brothers have just announced their fall tour, adding several new dates throughout the South.

"Live At MTV" is a new online series featuring some incredible bands performing live at MTV in New York City. The most recent band to take the MTV . . . what they did at MTV, high above the Times Square traffic and bustle, performing their mesmeric mix of classical, country, pop, jazz and bluegrass.

Thile and his band The Punch Brothers look the part, playing acoustic instruments sans drummer. But listen closer to the group's second album, . . . of different textures and tempos in a time when speed seems to be the theme in bluegrass. Is that something you were thinking about during recording?

In Punch Brothers' founder Chris Thile's view, their first record was "murky" and "ambiguous," but it turns out Brion was just what they needed to . . . through your speakers is so much more difficult with acoustic instruments than things that are already two-dimensional, like an electric guitar."

The word bluegrass weighs heavy on Chris Thile. Thile and his band The Punch Brothers look the part, playing acoustic instruments sans drummer. But . . . going on here. For this band I think this is the way we're going to tackle it now. I really feel like we've hit our stride as a creative entity.

The word bluegrass weighs heavy on Chris Thile. Thile and his band The Punch Brothers look the part, playing acoustic instruments sans drummer. But . . . something different going on here. "We're out there attempting to make new music, not rehashing the past," Thile said in a recent phone interview.

I’m both fascinated and baffled by the Punch Brothers’ refusal to allow the music they make to be classified as bluegrass. I suppose that Chris . . . but cohesive enough to hang together in surely the most concise and likely the most (commercially) successful Punch Brothers record to date.

The first thing that stands out about Punch Brothers’ sophomore release Antifogmatic  is its name. Taken from a popular 19th century alcoholic . . . banjo picking that elevate the record to new heights in bluegrass, newgrass, or whatever kind of grass is being used to describe their sound.