Maeri Ferguson

If Joni Mitchell, Aimee Mann, and Sharon Van Etten’s voices wafted up into a cloud of lavender smoke, Skylar Gudasz would emerge from it in a poof, brilliant and gleaming. The golden-throated Southerner possesses that bewitching vocal quality that seems capable of hypnotizing those who hear it, and on

She may have borrowed the album title, Borned in Ya, from an old interview with Ralph Stanley, but it couldn’t be better suited to anyone than Melissa Carper. Quite literally, she’s got the bona fides. Carper was raised on the classics — Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Ray Charles — and

To be the steward for stories and songs of eras past is a responsibility Jake Xerxes Fussell does not take lightly. He has, for at least a decade, shaped himself into a prolific conduit of archival folk songs, lovingly collaged with his own musical whims. His latest outing, When I’

What do a doomed heiress chanteuse, a devoted New York City bellhop, a prostitute in pastel tights, a dead man’s guitar, and a wistful railroad traveler have in common? Each appear vividly in songs on the latest album from The Felice Brothers, Valley of Abandoned Songs, the band’s

One of the best albums of 2022 was a low-key debut, Bummer Year, that came from Austin-based quartet Good Looks, but you’d have been lucky to catch them on tour. Shortly after their hometown album release show that spring, the band canceled much of their tour to support their

A journey like Jon Muq’s is almost cinematic in its grand, sweeping twists and turns. Born and raised in Uganda and settling, somewhat fortuitously, in Austin on the verge of the pandemic, Muq was warmly welcomed by the city’s vibrant music community. Eventually came the Dan Auerbach stamp