Rachel Cholst

The Shootouts are as electric as ever on their latest album, Switchback. The title track is an instrumental interlude breaking up the band’s most confident album yet. The rollicking guitars and buoyant trad country rhythm section take us back to matinee Westerns. While the band has always cultivated a

With Gumshoe, Samantha Crain overcomes her tendency to self-isolate. Crain’s signature blend of folk, blues, and rock has appeared on Reservation Dogs and Lily Gladstone’s film Fancy Dance. A member of the Choctaw nation, Crain used Gumshoe as an opportunity to take on their motto “Together we’re

Avery Friedman had spent plenty of time around music, but she’d never written a song before 2023. With the encouragement of her musician friends, Friedman pursued her craft and now, in the spring of 2025, we have her debut album New Thing. This eight-song collection spans a wide array

For Ron Pope, American Man, American Music is as advertised. The album even kicks off with Pope singing a jaunty bro country-inflected song about picking up “a brown-skinned doll” in Panama. The song swaggers with an easy-going attitude even as Pope reminds us of its title: "Nobody’s Gonna

If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. There will always be a place for Americana bar bands, bands that faithfully serve up that magical combination of melancholy and dogged determinism that feels most at home in small basement venues. After twenty years, Massy Ferguson perfected their version of

To listen to Swimming, the new album by Sam Moss, is to be confronted by beautiful contradictions. Moss and his ensemble spin a gossamer web of instrumentation around Moss’ earthy voice, at once hopeful and a deliverer of weary wisdom. With a band like Isa Burke on virtually every string