I'm sure I wasn't the only one who witnessed the birth of a new star when the video with Pharrell Williams doing a masterclass with NYU student Maggie Rogers went viral.

In the subsequent weeks I played Alaska a whole lot on Virgin Radio Music Discovery and so when the new single Dog Years dropped into my inbox I felt it was time to get my namesake and total dreamboat Maggie Rogers on the phone.

I've noticed since she's been picked up by the BBC Sound of 2017 and Vevo Ones To Watch tipped lists for next year - quite rightly. 

Here we are nattering about her start in music, Alaska, the new single Dog Years and what's coming next...

2017 is going to be all the better for having the debut Formation album in it.

Look At The Powerful People drops March 3rd.
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The twins Matt and Will Ritson and Kai from the band dropped by Virgin Radio HQ to be on Music Discovery and play the new single Powerful People.

Listen to our chats about the album, single, video for it, Powerful People, Mike Skinner's garms and much more....

Off the back of Bayonne's brilliant new album 'Primitives' the man himself Roger Sellers from Austin, Texas came to visit me at Virgin Radio HQ.

I'd been playing a bunch of tracks from it in Music Discovery. I love how richly textured his music is. Listen back to our interview here: 

Big favourites of mine Nashville band All Them Witches came over to play another run of sold out UK gigs and I had the pleasure of chatting to the four bandmates for my Virgin Radio Music Discovery show backstage at their London Scala show.

They do the best kind of psychedelic rock; it's potent, raw, they have serious presence live and know how to wig the hell out. 

They told me all about their new record which is coming out next year (the first track Bruce Lee is below), about the music scene in Nashville and the reaction to Dying Surfer Meets His Maker.

About a year and a half ago I heard Hostage by Klangstof on the radio, found the track on You Tube and proceeded to listen to it on loop for a week. 

Klangstof is the brainchild of Norway's Koen Van Der Wardt and he has put out an incredible first album Close Eyes To Exit. It has the scope and brain melting climaxes of records you'd expect from Radiohead and Sigur Ros. 

When Koen was over the in UK playing some gigs we had a chat about how the band formed, the album, our mutual obsession Radiohead, touring Europe and what's next...

When I was sitting in for Tim Cocker on Virgin Radio evenings I chose the wonderful Bone Weary by The Wytches from their new album All Your Happy Life as my Record of the Week.

Had a chat with the bassist Daniel Rumsey about it as they were on tour of the UK. Listen back to that here:

Lou Reed - The RCA & Arista Album Collection is set on November 4th.
 
The CD set of remasterings of Lou Reed’s back catalogue between 1972 to 1986, which he worked on at New York’s Masterdisk before he died in October 2013, comes out this Friday, with the vinyl release set for November (18th).
 
It’s taken a couple of years to put it together and brings together in an anthology, 16 ground-breaking studio and live albums written, recorded and often produced by Reed as a solo artists following the 1970 dissolution of the Velvet Underground.
 
LOU REED – THE RCA & ARISTA ALBUM COLLECTION
1. Lou Reed (April 1972)
2. Transformer (November 1972)
3. Berlin (July 1973)
4. Rock n Roll Animal (live – February 1974)
5. Sally Can’t Dance (August 1974)
6. Metal Machine Music (July 1975)
7. Coney Island Baby (December 1975)
8. Rock and Roll Heart (October 1976)
9. Street Hassle (February 1978)
10. Lou Reed Live  Take No Prisoners (2 CDs – November 1978)
11. The Bells (April 1979)
12. Growing Up in Public (April 1980)
13. The Blue Mask (February 1982)
14. Legendary Hearts (March 1983)
15. New Sensations (April 1984)
16. Mistrial (June 1986)
 
American musician/composer/performance artist and Lou Reed's wife and partner for twenty-one years Laurie Anderson spoke to me for BBC 6 Music about the box sets, what she describes as a beautiful expression of that time, and about Lou’s involvement…