Jon Young

A man of myriad moods, Matthew Stephen Ward from Portland, Oregon, can trade breathtaking tenderness for bitter despair in an instant, or display affection and contempt with a single breath. His transcendent Supernatural Thing captures indelible episodes of bright magic and dark torment, trading lightly in big ideas as it

Love hurts, love consumes, and occasionally love uplifts, according to Brandy Clark. On her absorbing self-titled fourth album, this insightful singer-songwriter catalogs assorted varieties of love, from romantic and greedy to familial and spiritual, making the most universal of topics feel fresh and urgent. Brandy Clark is produced

David Wax Museum calls its sound “Mexo-Americana,” but don’t expect a highfalutin cross-cultural experiment. Wax and his wife, Suz Slezak, play exotic-seeming stringed instruments (jarana jarocha, huapanguera) and percussion (donkey jawbone), but don’t prepare for an exercise in dry folklore. On the exhilarating You Must

Robbie Fulks has covered a lot of ground since the mid-’90s, most of it qualifying as Americana. The singer-songwriter has released solo projects ranging from somber character studies (2016’s Grammy-nominated Upland Stories) to a rollicking celebration of overlooked country music ancestors (2001’s 13 Hillbilly Giants)

Nostalgia is a trap, an alluring one to be sure, but often a dead end. California’s Nick Waterhouse has been tempting fate over the last decade, exploring a groove that draws heavily from early-’60s R&B and jazz, yet he’s never been a simple retro act.