Matt Ruppert

In the last nearly 25 years, Josh Ritter has produced an oeuvre defined by thoughtful metaphors that ring truer than truth, all while expressing the constant sense that he is searching for something bigger than the self, and maybe bigger than the world. With his 11th album, Spectral Lines, Ritter

There are two kinds of sirens: warnings and invitations. Trapper Schoepp has filled his new album, Siren Songs, with a wide variety of them, including the calls of good and frightening love, the sea’s terrible lure, and even the sirens that aren’t sirens. Schoepp recorded Siren Songs at

It’s easy to imagine Mat Davidson (the man behind Twain) as an itinerant philosopher who writes music instead of essays, soft examinations of being instead of arguments about what’s true. His songs ripple with a quiet search for and appreciation of meaning, though they never offer answers. It

When Harlan Howard first called country music “three chords and the truth,” he never could have predicted how those three chords would transform into something as ringing and rowdy as it is rugged and righteous. Kendell Marvel is the embodied version of a songwriter with a gift for finding the

We live in a world so full of flashing lights, so saturated with constant busyness, that it can feel impossible to slow down enough to pay attention, to listen to the world, to ourselves. With No Regular Dog, Kelsey Waldon explores the tensions of recognizing and loving oneself while acknowledging

Everything changes. Nothing changes. As an itinerant songwriter settled into Chicago in 2007, Joe Pug recorded Nation of Heat in the space of others’ canceled sessions, carrying only a guitar, a harmonica, and his voice. It was necessarily a sparse affair, limited by time and money. When Pug finally had