Stories

SPOTLIGHT: Valerie June Clings to Joy on ‘Owls, Omens, and Oracles’

Like an alter with mystical crystals, holy spirits, and positive energies, everything about Valerie June’s fourth studio album is offered right there in the title — Owls, Omens, and Oracles.

Calling from her home in Brooklyn, seated in front of enough shelving with vinyl records to cover the entire Zoom background, June explains that she splits her time between the city and rural Tennessee lands where she grew up. The owls, she begins, came to her there:

“I've seen everything, snakes, frogs, turtles, like muskrat, coons…all kinds of birds, but never an owl.”

One early morning, around 5 or 6 a.m., while June was drinking her first cup of tea in the Tennessee house, she spied one of the wise, winged creatures standing on a post across the pond.

Straight from The Source: Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey and American Roots Music Continue to Go Hand In Hand

In Lynchburg, Tennessee, about an hour outside Nashville, the historic Jack Daniel’s Distillery welcomes around 300,000 people annually. Visitors travel from around the globe to learn how Tennessee whiskey is made at America’s oldest registered distillery — which is also one of the largest in the world — and

No Depression’s Best of April 2025 Playlist

No Depression's Best of April 2025 starts off with April Spotlight artist Valerie June's directive, plea, and call to action "Joy, Joy!" The song, which kicks off her fourth studio LP, Owls, Omens, and Oracles, serves as a guiding light for so much these

SPOTLIGHT: The Gift of Art as a Service [ESSAY]

Editor’s Note: Valerie June is No Depression’s Spotlight Artist for April 2025. Learn more about her life and new album, Owls, Omens, and Oracles, which was released April 11, in this feature. I just got off the phone with Fiona Prine. I couldn’t have said it better.

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