Play music, and play with the box

   - D.D.
Various Artists Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets, 1965-1970. (Rhino ***) It's been a year of 40th anniversaries, from Sgt. Pepper to "Respect," mostly celebrating 1967 as the sacred year of the counterculture. This Nuggets set drinks deep from that cup of boomer nostalgia. While it's every bit as hippy-dippy-trippy as you might imagine (or recall), it also ties together the multifarious strands of a music scene in the epicenter of the youthquake, showcasing an impressively deep talent pool, from the Jefferson Airplane to Sly & the Family Stone, Santana to Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks. (4 CDs, $65)

   - D.D.
Various Artists People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938 (Tompkins Square ***½). Just as Law & Order and CSI rip crime stories from the headlines, so it is with the balladeers, songsters and troubadours gathered here. In the words of intro author Tom Waits, the likes of Blind Alfred Reed, Fiddlin' John Carson, and Cantor Joseph Rosenblatt use "cyclones, flood, famine, drought, shipwrecks, pestilence, hurricanes, suicides, death of child, murder . . . the T-bone streak of the news business" as fodder for musical morality plays. People, take warning: This is a scratchy, old-timey collection, but an excellently conceived, curated and compiled one that captures a fascinating slice of American musical history. (3 CDs, $52)

   - D.D.
Various Artists Vee-Jay: The Definitive Collection (Shout Factory ****). Vee-Jay Records of Chicago predated Motown as a successful black-owned record label, but its roster was much more diverse, offering blues, doo-wop, gospel, soul and rock-and-roll. This hugely entertaining set mixes them all together as it covers the label's 1953-66 tenure with artists such as Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, the Staple Singers, the Swan Silvertones, the Dells, the Four Seasons, and many lesser-known but deserving talents. (No Beatles, though.) (4 CDs, $60)

   - N.C.
Various Artists The War: Soundtrack and Music From the Second World War (Legacy ***). This audio companion to the Ken Burns PBS 15-hour telling of the American World War II story is an odd hodgepodge. There's a soundtrack disc, with a suitably sincere Norah Jones performance of Gene Scheer's "American Anthem," along with bluesy new compositions by Wynton Marsalis and oldies-but-goodies from Bing Crosby and Count Basie. Another disc gathers classical pieces. The treats, however, are the two discs of 1940s hits from Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Frank Sinatra, among others, sure to rekindle the memories of any WWII veteran on your gift-giving list. (4 CDs, $50)

   - D.D.