The Avett Brothers return with their first album in five years. Produced by longtime collaborator, friend and early champion Rick Rubin, The Avett Brothers is as much untitled as it is self-titled, for as Thomas Keating said: “Silence is God’s first language – everything else is a poor translation.”

These days, every artist’s album needs to have a story. The music can’t speak for itself.

For her fourth album, Half Moon Rising, the North Yorkshire-born country singer-songwriter headed to San Diego for an eight day session, mostly recorded live, the magic evident from the get go with balladeering soaring opening track ‘Heart and Soul’, a straightforward supportive love song (“I’ve danced with your demons/Now I live with all these feelings/Only I can ever save you”), leading into the pedal steel keening ‘A Love Like That’, another ballad reflecting on a love of similar devotion (“My old friend where have you been/Still out there searching for someone/What I’d give for a love like that… My dreams have been and passed/Through the eyes of my child I live now”).

Mat Kearney's self-titled LP is the most honest and raw he's ever been. Described as "the soundtrack for a drive into mountains or a beach hang with friends," Kearney's growth as an artist is evident as this album sees him take on more of the production; writing and producing some songs solely on his own. His growth isn't limited to his solo production, it also lead him to collaborate in ways he hadn't done before. Having The Brook & The Bluff play on a handful of these songs, Mat said "it was the first time I felt like I was in a band." The overall vision for the album kept it simple. Real instruments and honest performances, similar to the early days of Kearney's career.

Ode & Ballade by Skye Consort & Emma Bjorling brings stories of medieval saints and sacred wells, fair maidens outsmarting presumptuous knights, beautiful or boisterous drinking songs, thieves meeting their fate, heartbreaking love songs, groovy dance tunes, and celebrations of the return of Spring. The album combines elements from world music and classical traditions to narrate poems, tales, legends, and sonnets from Sweden, Ireland, Scotland, France and more.

4 Blu-ray Set Featuring Remastered Hi-Res Stereo, Dolby Atmos mixes by Grammy® Award Winning producer Ken Caillat and Claus Trelby, and Quad Mixes of FOR THE ROSES (1972), COURT AND SPARK (1974), MILES OF AISLES (1974), and THE HISSING OF SUMMER LAWNS (1975). A brand new 2023 Quad Mix of FOR THE ROSES was done by Bruce Botnick.

For Camp Saint Helene, the concept of otherworldliness is neither strange nor complex, but alluring and holy. Created by Elizabeth Celeste Ibarra, Dylan Nowik, Wesley Harper and Alex Wernquest, they approach their craft akin to a ritual, leaning into the notion that art and expression are sacred experiences on an overstimulated planet. Often informed by the spirit of a defunct Christian-summer camp turned arts-colony deep within the mountains of New York, their music searches for shimmers of hope amidst hints of doom.

Just Like Leaving bears a powerful authenticity that prompted Rolling Stone to praise White's songwriting as "sublime Appalachian heartbreak." In sculpting the album's sparse but lushly detailed sound, White worked with a lineup of musicians she encountered through years of making the rounds at roots-music festivals, including Reed Stutz on mandolin/vocals; Julian Pinelli on fiddle/vocals, and Robert Alan Mackie on bass.

The bleak and foreboding landscape surrounding Keeley's North Yorkshire home seems to inhabit her third LP, 'The Hollow'. The moors, visible from her studio window, impact upon a music that feels made of these places: windswept, rain-soaked and blinking through the low-lit landscape. The album's title derives from discovering a long-abandoned mining shaft whilst out walking - the past lurking within and haunting the present we now occupy. A connection to time that places us within it, facing what is gone and what may come. But also, perhaps that time has no concern as to whether we're here or not.

On Parenthesis, I, Josienne Clarke has not only embraced her past but has also redefined herself in the present, presenting a body of work that is shimmering, warm, intimate, and at times, profoundly heart-wrenching. Throughout her career, Clarke has been both a Rough Trade-signed artist and a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award-winner, two opposing poles that neatly sum up her inability to be pigeonholed. Parenthesis, I is a masterful journey through her personal and musical evolution, drawing influence from folk greats Nick Drake and Sandy Denny, as well as more contemporary artists like Julia Jacklin, Courtney Marie Andrews, Anaïs Mitchell and Lucy Dacus.

Blending psych-tinged indie-pop with Appalachia-sourced folk music, Toronto sextet Beams have long been a unique voice among the Canadian indie rock scene. With their newly announced third album Requiem for a Planet, the outfit… dive[s] headfirst into the difficult experience of coming of age in a world that isn’t nearly as functional as the one we may have perceived growing up.

Emily Nenni has written a follow-up to 2022’s critically acclaimed record, On The Ranch. Her debut album garnered her much success and introduced her to a devoted audience of music fans who celebrate the traditional side of country music while embracing the modern indie aesthetic that comes with that nod to the past. While writing her latest record, Drive & Cry, Nenni looked in the rearview mirror for inspiration but kept focus on the sound that she has become known for. “This is the first record I have completely written on my own. I spent a good bit of solitary time ruminating on things that had happened over the last year or two. Rethinking what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, who with, even in just the everyday. Change is hard but also such a gift.”

Four years have passed since the release of Reinhard Mey's last album.

When My Favorite Picture of You came out in 2013, it seemed likely we were hearing Guy Clark's last batch of songs. Guy died three years later at age 74, but his legacy endures, thanks the efforts of friends and peers who believed in the hard truths and timeless beauty of his music. Anyone who ever saw Guy's workshop—or the re-creation of it at the Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit—no doubt noticed all the tapes on the wall. Cassettes were filled with songs-in-progress over the decades. Stashed away were even more recordings on reel-to-reel.

Though she's often lumped into the freak folk category, Jessica Pratt is gauze-wrapped edges and soft curves; there is none of the angularity of, say, Karen Dalton, or the calculated quirk of Devendra Banhart. At times, she has more in common with jazz queen Blossom Dearie's light touch. For her fourth album, Pratt wanted to capture "big panoramic sounds that make you think of the ocean and California''—more specifically, the lost-innocence period post Summer of Love, when the sun and Hollywood stars burned brightly but Los Angeles was gripped by fear and loathing. (Tail-end 1960s cultural touchpoints: Helter Skelter, Kenneth Anger, Eve Babitz, Friends-era Beach Boys.)