Hailing from Austin, Texas, The Animeros craft a genre-blending sound with their distinctive style and captivating live shows, as captured on this new Easy Eye Sound/Concord release. South Texas soul and 1960s Columbian cumbia rhythms meet up in a gritty barroom in Mexico, where the drinks flow and the dance floor is electric. “The psychedelic cumbia/chichi sorcerers lay down a 60s/70s fuzz bomb of South American mania.” –The Austin Chronicle

Signature Sounds is releasing Willi Carlisle’s latest album this week: 17 songs about ditch diggers, horse girls, existential crises at Chinese buffets, and the universal bubba who can fix anything. “I think this one goes to outer space,” says Carlisle. “I think this is the widest range of influences that I’ve ever had. It touches on funk, it touches on Americana, Cajun, old-time, and experimental music.” This is the first time Tyler Childers has been tapped as producer outside of his own records, and Childers’ band backs up Carlisle on this. “It’s the first time I’ve ever used synthesizers and double electric guitars. There’s also more fretless 19th-century style banjo on it than any record I’ve ever made.”

On January 8, 2022, in the aftermath of a Nashville blizzard, an extraordinary group of musicians gathered at the historic Ryman Auditorium for a sold-out performance celebrating Béla's album My Bluegrass Heart, which went on to win the GRAMMY for Best Bluegrass Album later that year. Now that live recording has been released, with 20 tracks of incredible virtuosity and innovative picking. Joining Bela are Edgar Meyer & Mark Schatz on bass, Jerry Douglas & Justin Moses on Dobro, Michael Cleveland & Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Billy Strings, Stuart Duncan & Molly Tuttle on guitar, Sam Bush & Sierra Hull on mandolin, and Bela’s mentor Tony Trischka with additional banjo greatness.

We’re pleased to announce a new album from one of our favorite singer/songwriters, Mary Gauthier! Reckoning will be officially released on September 25th. The nine new songs here exude a sense of urgency during turbulent times, while offering inspiration and hope. They portray characters who arrive at pivotal moments and face choices that ultimately define lives, communities, and even history. Sounds like a Mary Gauthier album, for sure.

Giddens and her long-time musical collaborator and writing partner, Dirk Powell, co-produced this new album, recorded live and engineered and mixed at The Cypress House in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Blending several originals with versions of traditional folk or old-time songs, Giddens and her collaborators deliver a beacon of hope in our dark time. WNCW fans will appreciate the wonderful diversity of roots styles here, thanks to Powell’s Cajun and Delta blues fiddle and guitar work, Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu, and Giddens’ banjo and vocal prowess.

We like what the Folk Alley folks -- whose radio show we air Tuesday nights/Wednesday mornings at Midnight -- have to say about it: “If you’re still grooving to the dusty, Bacardi-scented party that started with 2021’s ‘In the Blossom of Their Shade’ and continued on past dusk via ‘Rhumba Country’ three years later, don’t stop: Pokey LaFarge is back with a new record, the mood’s still loose, and his lyrics are as wry and winking as ever. But something deeper is burbling under the surface of Rent Money, 11 unadorned tracks that mark LaFarge’s first full-length release on his own label, Boxer Boy Records. …As LaFarge acknowledges in press materials, these songs serve as a rumination on a country with a growing wealth gap and a restive population, one where pressed vinyl seems essential even when the price of everything keeps going up.”

Israel Nash, hailed as a "master of sonic textures" by Rolling Stone, releases his adaptation of The Byrds' iconic 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Reinterpreting the landmark record through a modern lens, Nash transforms the country-rock classic into a genre-bending take on contemporary American roots music. Exploration runs throughout the project – classic melodies shift in new directions, familiar rhythms are rebuilt, tempos move differently. Even the track list is different.

Canyon Falls Trailer Band is a 16-song concept album that follows a fictional, hard-to-pin-down Appalachian group called the Canyon Falls Trailer Band who stage a one-time Nashville showcase to chase industry approval before vanishing into music folklore.

Get ready for some “Swampytonkin’” music, as Paige calls it. Raised on a farm near the muddy banks of the Mississippi River, the Austin-based singer-songwriter and pianist is back with her second full-length album, Swampwater. Recorded at Austin’s famed Finishing School and produced by Jonathan Tyler, Swampwater is a raw collection born from personal experiences, navigating love, loss, heartbreak, and grief, before ultimately heading to the honky-tonk to sing the blues away.

The legendary British singer/songwriter/guitarist/troubadour is back with his 20th album. Initial music reviewers and fans are drawing comparisons to 1999’s Mock Tudor and 1975’s Pour Down Like Silver in terms of its quality and potential ranking among his great releases following his chapters with Fairport Convention and former wife Linda Thompson. His gruff voice might be an acquired taste for those uninitiated to the greatness of “RT”, but you don’t want to miss out on the inventive characters he conjures up in his songs, not to mention his phenomenal guitar work.