NPR News

Local Natives, a Los Angeles-based indie-rock outfit, made a splash in 2009 with its self-funded debut album Gorilla Manor. The band went on tour with Arcade Fire and The National in support of the record, which hit No. 3 on the Billboard 200 New Artist Chart.

In the '60s, some fervent rock groupies formed a band called the GTOs — short for "Girls Together Outrageously" — and while it didn't last, the name captures the impulse behind stories in which women chafe against the male-centric society that pulls their strings. This week you can see a girls-together-outrageously triple bill: Spring Breakers, Ginger & Rosa and Beyond the Hills.

Microbes may once have happily existed on the surface of Mars, according to chemical analysis of a sedimentary rock in the Red Planet's Gale crater. NASA geologist and exobiologist David Blake discusses evidence for an ancient freshwater lake in the crater, and describes the mineral-chomping microbes that may have thrived there.

By combing through 100 million search queries on Bing, Yahoo and Google, Microsoft Research Lab co-director Eric Horvitz and his colleagues were able to discover a previously unknown interaction between two commonly prescribed drugs. Horvitz says the method might detect dangerous drug interactions earlier than the FDA's warning system.