Almost as unique as Prince’s music is the Minneapolis native’s couture: frilly tops, paisley jackets, ruffled collars. Each of these details is exactingly recreated in miniature by Troy Gua, whose Thunderbirds-esque dolls even include cashmere-fluff chest hair.

In a tribute to Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, artist Cory Arcangel recreated the 1909 piece Drei Klavierstücke, Op. 11—widely considered the first “atonal” piece of music composed—using only clips from YouTube cat videos.

Minnesota native Bob Dylan is receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Named with Toni Morrison, labor activist Dolores Huerta and 10 others, his five-decade career and “influence on the civil rights movement” were noted by the White House.

A new University College Dublin study tracked last.fm data to find out which cities have the biggest impact on our musical tastes. While Minneapolis is among the top 20 influencing cities, Atlanta is tops overall and in hip hop; Montreal leads in indie.

In the Arab Spring, “art, music and performance fueled revolution by giving the disenfranchised—the outsiders, the rebels, the refugees, the critics—a second draft to rewrite their country’s cultural memory,” Safa Samiezade’-Yazd writes.

Saturday is Record Store Day, a celebration of the more than 700 independently owned bricks-and-mortar records stores across the US. A great chance to buy locally—and get the raw materials to make your own Christian Marclay-style album-art collage.

Among the first class of Doris Duke Artists, who’ll receive multi-year cash grants of $225,000, are Walker friends Anne Bogart, Bill Frisell, Vijay Iyer, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Young Jean Lee, Eiko Otake, Ralph Lemon, Meredith Monk, Sarah Michelson, and others.

Craig Finn, who headlines Rock the Garden with the Hold Steady, got dudded up in the desert for a photoshoot as part of the Esquire Songwriting Challenge, in which he and four others each wrote a song, on the spot, inspired by the phrase “Pacific Standard Time.”

Hailed as “a born storyteller who’s chosen rock as his medium” (Pitchfork), Craig Finn is many things: Springsteen acolyte, avowed Twins fan, Breck High grad, stand-up guy, and frontman for the Hold Steady. As Finn returns to his roots and readies the band to headline Rock the Garden 2012, I took a moment to catch up with him on music, the Twin Cities, and the shape of things to come.