I haven't listened to much (any) new music this week, because I'm still pretty obsessed with Sara Bareilles' new album. For the first week I was pretty focused on the first half of the album.

Now I can't get the second half of the album out of my head. (Particular favorites are Cassiopeia and I Choose You - which appears to be the new single...and also is probably soon coming to a wedding near you.)

I've also been poking around her website a bit this week - and that's how I stumbled across this week's Music Monday New Thing.

The main reason I went to the site was to find out Bareilles' tour dates - I mentioned last week (which includes my thoughts on the album, if you want to click back) that I would love to see her live - and I was disappointed to see that at least at the start it's only taking her to the western part of the country.

But while I was on the site I poked around and came across some really good stuff...and one of them made devoting two Music Mondays to Sara Bareilles worth it. (That's how much I like the album - I haven't even devoted two Music Mondays to my brother. Well, I kind of have. And maybe it's worth mentioning that he played at the Newport Folk Festival this weekend with The Lone Bellow - it's like Music Monday worlds colliding!)

In addition to a bunch of video of Bareilles promoting The Blessed Unrest, there's a link to a series of interviews she did with VH1. (The channel seems to love her - I think they take partial credit for "discovering" her and she is one of their featured artists. I wouldn't know - I haven't watched a music channel in years.)

(Also parenthetically, I tried to find more video of this VH1 series. It doesn't seem to be something they do regularly, but I hope they consider doing more of it. I searched their site for 'track by track', and this is what the search engine spit out - there might be some stuff there worth checking out. They also have pages devoted to certain artists, and Sara Bareilles is one. Another series of videos worth checking out are "Sara Bareilles Makes A Record" - there's 6 of them, and it's a quick inside look at the production of an album.)

Anyway, in the 'track by track' videos, Bareilles spends a minute or two talking about each of the tracks on the new album.

This is something I always wonder about - in fact, I speculated about the meanings of some of the songs in what I wrote last week. I was wrong in some cases, and I liked hearing the real stories, like:

-It turns out, disappointingly, that Bareilles was at a wedding in Germany when a friend texted her about a jog he took through a Queens cemetery, with the skyscrapers in the background. She has not yet even been in that cemetery, though she might if they film a video for the Chasing The Sun.

-As I grew to like Cassiopeia I decided to watch the video of Bareilles talking about each of the tracks. The more closely I listened to the song the more I thought, "Is this really a love song for stars?" When I saw her talk about it I realized, yes, it is.

-The fact that December is her favorite song on the album. I always wonder if artists have favorites.

-Finally, Bareilles talked about making the video for Brave. Fun fact - Rashida Jones (of Office/Parks and Rec fame...and many other things as well. Google it.) directed the video. It is a really fun, uplifting video.

I recommend three things: 1) Get the album. It's so good. I'm thinking, at this point, I like it even more than Kaleidoscope Heart. 2) Check out Sara Bareilles talking about each track at VH1.com. The link is above, but here it is again - this one will take you to 'Part 2' - the second half of the album. I just think she's the coolest. 3) Watch the video for Brave. I'll make it easy for you: