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A piece of conceptual art consisting of a simple banana, duct-taped to a wall, sold for $6.2 million at an auction Wednesday, with the winning bid coming from a prominent cryptocurrency entrepreneur.

The IRS is cutting more than 6,000 jobs this week, as part of the Trump administration's downsizing of the overall federal workforce. The job cuts at the IRS come in the middle of the tax-filing season.

In Central America, most of the best musicians around wind up in cover bands, because it pays better than trying to do original material. But Prueba de Sonido refuses to do that. This Salvadoran band hopes its style of rock propels it onto the international stage. Reporter Clark Boyd reports from San Salvador.

Meredith Ochs reviews Satellite Rides, the new release by the promising alternative country band, Old 97s. Ochs says the band and its leader Rhett Miller have been writing wonderful pop music with clever lyrics. (4:30) Satellite Rides by Old 97s is on the Elektra Records label. Their Web site is www.old97s.com.

Wilco's new album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot takes the erstwhile alt-country band even further from its roots. Frontman Jeff Tweedy talks with John Ydstie on All Things Considered. And Meredith Ochs reviews a new anthology of music from Tweedy's old band, the legendary Uncle Tupelo. (8:15) The CD is on Nonesuch Records. See http://www.wilcoworld.net/.

In Part 10 of our series on the roots of American country music, NPR's Paul Brown tells the story of Bob Wills. The fiddler grew up in a family of fiddlers in the cultural mixing bowl of the American southwest. He went on to lead a band that mixed breakdowns, big band swing, blues and square dance music — a style that came to be called Western swing.

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. But in 1961, he was a student at Saint Paul's prep school in New Hampshire, where he played bass guitar for a band called the Electras. A copy of the band's album sold on eBay this week for more than $2,500. Hear NPR's Bob Edwards.

Guitarist, songwriter and vocalist James Hetfield was a founding member of the metal band Metallica. His time in rehab is chronicled in the documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, which tracks the band at a time of crisis and is now on DVD. We rebroadcast an interview with Hetfield from Nov. 9, 2004.

In the late 1960s he founded the MC5, a Detroit band considered to be the prototype for punk rock. By 1972 the band had burned out. In between then and now, Kramer did time in jail for drugs, teamed up with Don and David Was to found the group Was (Not Was), and began a solo career. His new solo album is Adult World. This interview first aired August 20, 2002.

The Six Parts Seven are an instrumental band from Kent, Ohio. They combine the viola and lap steel with a traditional rock band's drums, bass and guitars. Guitarist Allen Karpkinski talks about marriage and living in the moment, themes on the group's fourth album, Everywhere and Right Here.