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NPR music reviewer Meredith Ochs shares her picks for the year's best CDs. Ochs is host of Sirius Satellite Radio's "Outlaw Country" channel, a contributing editor for Guitar World magazine and a regular contributor to NPR's All Things Considered. She's also the vocalist and guitarist for the rock band The Damn Lovelys.

FolkAlley.com, an Internet folk-music service produced by NPR station WKSU in Kent, Ohio, specializes in a blend of contemporary and traditional singer/songwriters, Americana, roots, Celtic, bluegrass, world music and more. Here's a look at Folk Alley's picks for the best albums of 2006.

Reports vary as to whether al-Shabab's Zakariye Ismail Ahmed Hersi turned himself in or was captured in a raid. The U.S. had placed a $3 million bounty on the leading Islamist extremist.

British forces capture an Iraqi general in the southern city of Basra. A spokesperson says the general is the highest-ranking Iraqi prisoner of war thus far. Meanwhile, U.S.-led warplanes strike facilities in Baghdad, including a presidential palace, a military intelligence complex and the barracks of a paramilitary training center. Hear NPR News.

Albums are still events for us, even and especially as we shelter in place. Lido Pimienta, Fiona Apple and Sam Hunt released music that we held close to the chest.

In terms of pop hits, the shadow of 2013 fell over most of 2014. But for NPR Music's Stephen Thompson, there were plenty of winners this year as well.

The best folk and roots music of the year, from quiet acoustic solo records to stomping shout-alongs, focused on community, elements of ancestry and stories that unite us.

It's been a year of complacency deferred and sleeping giants roused. So it's only natural that much of 2017's best music would reflect that tumult, albeit in radically different ways.

Peso Pluma is YouTube's most viewed artist of the year in the U.S. The Mexican music phenom beat out Taylor Swift, Drake, YoungBoy Never Broke Again and Bad Bunny for the top spot.

Also: Osama bin Laden's son-in-law due in Manhattan court; the two Koreas ratchet up rhetoric; Catholic cardinals expected to set date for start of conclave; Northeast braces for more snow and flooding.