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Get to know this terrific new name on the Americana music scene. She cites Joni Mitchell and John Prine as primary influences, but another one is likely her father, a VA/NC native who played in a Jimmy Martin cover band in Calgary throughout her childhood. "Sometimes the minute you hear a voice, you know it's for the ages. That's how Canadian Bella White, the daughter of a Virginia bluegrasser, enters the picture. Making her second album now, at 22, White is poised for a major breakthrough. This is her origin story." (NPR)

New Braunfels, Texas native Dallas Burrow has a lot of great stories, particularly about music legends like Townes Van Zandt. One of his favorite stories to tell is about a night in Nashville in the early 70s, when Burrow’s father, Mike Burrow, was hosting Richard Dobson, John Lomax III, and Van Zandt at a pub he ran with his siblings on Elliston Place near the old Exit/In. After a late night shutting down the bar, the foursome hit an after party, where Van Zandt insisted they all become blood brothers to ensure they’d be forever cosmically linked. Everyone agreed, and perhaps through some mystical, intangible power that often propels so much music, Van Zandt’s style has been transfused into Burrow more than any other artist. And now that you know a bit of this story, you know a lot about the feel of these great new songs from Dallas – all but one of which were written by him (including co-writes with Charley Crockett and Jonathan Tyler). This one, like all of this week’s New Tunes at 2 albums, will be released on June 16th.

We are so grateful to Tim and Jan (Fabricius) O’Brien for spending a day in Studio B with us last year, and letting us release that WNCW fundraiser CD of their songs during our Spring Fund Drive! Now we’re grateful as well for this new one, set for release on June 16 on Howdy Skies Records. Thirteen inspired new originals about a bear, a fish, lambs, horses, and some people too — a grave digger, a neighbor, and even Walter Cronkite. Cup of Sugar is a feel-good summer release. But while the songs are playful and sprinkled with humor, there's plenty to chew on just below the surface. Tim wrote/co-wrote every song on the album. (Co-writers include Ronnie Bowman, Jonathon Byrd, Shawn Camp, Jan, and Thomm Jutz.) Cup of Sugar finds multi-instrumental O’Brien backed by his loyal band mates Mike Bub, Shad Cobb and his wife, supplemented by Jamie Dick on drums, Mike Rojas on keyboards, Russ Pahl on steel guitar, and Cory Walker on banjo. Bluegrass icon Del McCoury lends his signature guitar and tenor vocal on “Let the Horses Run.”

GRAMMY-winning multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello makes her Blue Note Records debut with The Omnichord Real Book, a visionary, expansive, and deeply jazz-influenced album that marks the start of a new chapter in her career. "This album is about the way we see old things in new ways," Ndegeocello shares in a statement. "Everything moved so quickly when my parents died. Changed my view of everything and myself in the blink of an eye. As I sifted through the remains of their life together, I found my first Real Book (a musician’s compilation of lead sheets for jazz standards), the one my father gave me. I took their records, the ones I grew up hearing, learning, remembering. My mother gifted me with her ache, I carry the melancholy that defined her experience and, in turn, my experience of this thing called life calls me to disappear into my imagination and to hear the music."

Rooted in vintage country, Ain’t Through Honky Tonkin’ Yet is an unapologetically beer- and tear-soaked homage to an era when hard-country weepers burst forth from AM transistor radios. “I’m in love with this idea of the real Nashville, " says Leigh. “The idyllic golden age, which, to me, is around 1967, 1968, because of the alchemy, the explosion that occurred, with the best country music songwriters ever, the best singers in country music.” The album’s country roots run deep, with guests like Marty Stuart and Rodney Crowell and a lineup of top-flight musicians. It will be released on June 16th, and she makes her Grand Ole Opry debut on the 24th. “Brennen can out play, out sing and out write just about anybody. She’s been dropping a lot of new music these days and we’re real lucky for it.” – Charley Crockett

This week we feature solo albums from two Mipso members in a row! On Monday it’s this one, whose label Sleepy Cat Records says “features talking roses, screaming oaks, and the fortune-telling powers of persimmons. Terrell’s songs bring to life a mystical landscape that calls you to pay attention. As he sings in “Whisper,” “All the ordinary silence is a radio if you listen.” Guests include Libby Rodenbough (our Tuesday feature), Tatiana Hargreaves, and Tift Merritt.

He may have gotten his start among Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash, but the self-described “radical preservationist” of Country music has lately been focused on that Cosmic American side of the Bakersfield/West Coast sound, with this new one that picks up where 2017’s “Way Out West” left off.

What do you get when you put members of The Meters, The New Mastersounds, Greyboy Alstars, and The Nth Power together…in incredible studios in Iceland? This. It’s the 2nd record in the “Floki Sessions” series following the great 2022 release from The New Mastersounds.

Lukas digs deeper into his country roots on this one, with a dozen strong, often hilarious songs. “I started to realize that all of my favorite songs that I’ve written are written for what I love to do live,” he says. “And what I love to do live is play country soul funk. Something with a nice backbeat, something you can move to, and something that makes you want to sing along and shout out at the top of your lungs.”

In our 2nd spotlight of solo releases from members of the North Carolina band Mipso, we present this one from Rodenbough, who played violin, viola, guitar, and keys here, and wrote all of the songs. “Like always, I find myself looking backward at the paths these songs traveled to find themselves shoulder-to-shoulder as “an album.” I wrote most of them in the period where my mom was very sick and immediately after she passed away, but I wouldn’t say they’re grief songs. Mostly they’re about trying to keep the faith—believing life can be new and even better.”