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The heart of the blues-rock group Heartless Bastards is Erika Wennerstrom, who wears hers on her sleeve. Her band's new album, The Mountain, features a bold, hard-hitting sound.

Lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Colin Meloy is part of the indie pop quartet The Decemberists. The group hails from Portland, Ore. Meloy is known for using "10-dollar words" in his songs, and for "creating character studies that wouldn't sound out of place in a Victorian novel."

Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of the rock band Weezer, has released a solo set of at-home demos called Alone and Alone II.

Producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff helped pioneer the sound of Philadelphia soul. Their renowned record label, Philadelphia International, produced the hits "Love Train," "Backstabbers" and "The Love I Lost."

American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson has released All I Ever Wanted, her fourth album. Rock critic Ken Tucker has a review.

Mike Binder has directed nine feature films. In Reign Over Me, he gives a serious — an extremely serious — part to the comic Adam Sandler, who plays a man whose life is destroyed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Actor Seymour Cassel has roles in the new TV series Heist and the film Lonesome Jim. Cassel, who comes from a showbiz family, has been acting in film and TV since 1959. His mother worked in Burlesque, and Cassel grew up backstage, amid chorus girls and sequins.

In the age of the sampler, three innovative guitar players are taking their instruments to new heights: Richard Leo Johnson, Dominic Frasca, and Jonas Hellborg. Johnson taught himself 12-string guitar. Frasca has translated the music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. And Sweden's Hellborg leads his own trio.

A new film of Robert Penn Warren's novel All the King's Men stars Sean Penn as political boss Willie Stark, a role that won Broderick Crawford an Oscar in 1949. The remake also features Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Clarkson, and James Gandolfini. It's directed by Steven Zaillian, who won his own Oscar for the screenplay of Schindler's List.

British actor Tom Wilkinson is starring in two new films: Separate Lies, opposite Emily Watson, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Many American viewers first met Wilkinson in the popular British film The Full Monty; he was nominated for an Oscar for In the Bedroom.