Watch the in-studio performance of "Golden Embers" by the North Carolina duo Mandolin Orange, from their forthcoming album Tides of a Teardrop, due out February 1 on Yep Roc Records.

The Earls of Leicester deliver a song to which Flatt & Scruggs had to attach a warning label. These days, it fits in just fine with all the modern music about lying and cheating lovers, but back in the day it was simply too much to suggest that it was a woman doing the “steppin’”.

Nashville singer-songwriter Rachel Baiman has been steadily building a loyal following among folks predisposed to bluegrass and old-time music. Her debut album, Shame, established her as a songwriter unafraid of looking at reality through her music, rather than sugarcoating anything. And its follow-up, an EP titled Thanksgiving (due Nov. 2 on Free Dirt Records), sees her going even further in that truth-teller direction.

“Fenceline” focuses on the impulse humans have had across generations and societies, to build walls in an effort to keep unwanted people out. Tivel found herself wondering: What is at the core of this need to construct barriers between ourselves and others?

Twisted Pine's Rachel Sumner shares her lead single, "Bred In the Bone," from her upcoming solo EP, Anything Worth Doing.

Throughout their eponymous debut, Hush Kids weave a gorgeous melodic web with varying threads of toughness and texture. On the sparsely populated “Goodbye Rain,” they apply their delicately dulcet tones with a light touch that recalls one of 2017's most magical and memorable tracks, “Forces of Decay” by Rogue + Jaye. It's like the spoonful of musical sugar that helps the medicine of heartache go down.

Another master of musical melancholy is, undeniably, Lucy Wainwright Roche. On her new album, Little Beast, she churns out lyrical impossibilities time and again, each conveying so much with so little.

Thankfully we have artists like Lucy Kaplansky to draw our eyes to the small hints of beauty and promise around us, to remind us that hope is not a large, leaping, caterwauling thing, but rather a small bud on a fragile branch, trying in earnest to bloom.

With her new release, Holler, Ray has wandered her way into a sound that fits nicely under the big Americana umbrella. Melding the urgency of punk with the earthiness of country and the vaunt of Southern soul, Holler embraces more aspects of Ray's influences than any of her past efforts. Because of that, it feels like a more fully formed reflection of her, both as a person and an artist.

Hear "Giving Up" by the Edinburgh, Scotland duo, The Jellyman's Daughter, from their new album, Dead Reckoning.