Western twang meets baroque guitar stylings in pensive songs made for a desert sunset on the group's newest album, "Excuses for Travelers."

Her passion is always tempered by reality, and she has given voice to some of the saddest, most pensive songs in rhythm-and-blues.

But for most of its stadium set, it relied on basic hard-rock muscle while fans yelled along; even pensive songs like "Daughter" became thoughtless sing-alongs.

Alone onstage with a nylon-string guitar and some electronic gadgets, he had a rapt audience leaning in closely to savor his pensive, puckish songs.

South San Gabriel, from St. Louis, played pensive, country-tinged songs that unfurled gorgeously majestic crescendos.

He also sang his own pensive songs, strongly influenced by Joni Mitchell.

In pensive songs and deadpan stories, Laurie Anderson ruminates on freedom, technology, American identity and portents of mortality.

Her pensive songs suit a voice that fondly cradles her melodies, suffusing them with kindliness or melancholy.

When he wasn't singing his pensive songs, Mr. Gray couldn't hold back his grin at seeing so many fans.

A local club perennial, Versus specializes in honeyed fuzz rock shaped into pensive songs that gently meld with a listener's thoughts rather than intruding on them.