With Disney’s “Oz the Great and Powerful" in theaters, Soundcheck takes a look at the enduring story and songs.

The number one album on the Billboard chart this week is from the 36 year old country star Luke Bryan. The number two album is from a musician who hasn’t recorded a new song for more than 36 years -- Jimi Hendrix. His new, posthumous album is called “People, Hell And Angels.” Billboard editor and Soundcheck regular Joe Levy joins us to discuss. You can read more on the album from Joe Levy here.

The Swedish band Shout Out Louds have been making their moody, highly danceable indie pop for ten years and running -- but these days, they’re not in very much of a hurry. The group took their time writing and recording their new, meticulously constructed pop album, called Optica. We hear more about the quintet's process, and we get a live performance.

This week is the annual South By Southwest music festival  in Austin Texas. Thousands of bands are playing, and the whole city is swimming in music -- night AND day, indoors and out. Our digital producer Mike Katzif is there too, and he's been sending some must-hear sessions back our way.

Waxahatchee is the recording project of singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield. Katzif and Soundcheck's field engineer, Rachel Neel, recorded Katie at 9 a.m. this morning on a patio outside Austin’s Yellow Jacket Social Club, thus the cars and birds that you hear in the background. This song, "Swan Dive," also appears on Waxahatchee’s new album Cerulean Salt.

Billboard editor Joe Levy on the just-released album from the late guitarist and icon. Hear more from Joe Levy here.

If you looked at the charts this week and saw that Jimi Hendrix’s newest, People, Hell & Angels debuts at No. 2 on the Billboard album tally and that David Bowie’s latest was on its way to claiming the No. 1 spot on the UK charts, you’d be forgiven for wondering if we’d all tripped, fallen into the Way Back Machine, and landed in 1972.
 
That’s the year that Bowie immortalized a Hendrix-like figure on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, capturing all the lost potential and mythic power of rock’s greatest improviser on songs like “Rock & Roll Suicide.” Two years earlier, on September 18, 1970, Hendrix had become the first of the rock stars to die for our sins (beating Janis Joplin by a mere 16 days), though like many of the departed starmen and women, he’s never really left us.

Lucius is instantly joy-making, even before you hear them play, thanks to the band's matching black shirts and yellow pants or leggings. But as soon as you hear the band's catchy songs -- such as "Don't Just Sit There", it's impossible not to get caught up in the band's charming pop songwriting.

Fang Island brings its infectious rock to Union Pool Thursday night. Download the song "Asunder."