Here’s the plotline for Luray’s new video: Jolted awake by a thunderstorm, a young girl comforts herself with a music box that emits a warm glow and the gentle sounds of Luray. No ordinary music box, the device contains secret powers, transporting the girl out of her dark bedroom and into a bucolic field teeming with life. At video’s end, our young heroine is shown rowing a boat on a lake in slow-mo.

“Promise of Lakes,” with all its deep-summer vibes, was filmed in Southern Maryland around Labor Day in 2013. The editing stretched to Christmastime, which was not the ideal season to release a sun-dappled clip, says Luray’s vocalist and banjo player, Shannon Carey. So she put it on pause — for a few years.

“I’ve just been holding onto it and waiting for the right time,” Carey says, “and feeling like it will come.”

That time is now, before Luray embarks on a short tour of the Mid-Atlantic. (The band plays D.C. Tuesday night.) But a lot has changed since Carey recorded “Promise of Lakes,” a highlight from her 2013 album, The Wilder. Luray has since released an EP and prepped a new full-length, and Carey has found herself in new circumstances.

“It does bring up emotions for me to watch something that I made at that time, because a lot has changed for me,” says Carey. “I don’t live [in Maryland], I live in Richmond now. I’m no longer with my husband who I made that with. So, yeah, it definitely is bringing up feelings when I’m watching it.”

That’s not the only thing that’s changed: The young dreamer who stars in “Promise of Lakes” has grown up.

“We filmed this puppy three years ago,” Carey says with a laugh, “so now the little girl is, like, no longer little.”

Luray plays June 7 at DC9 with Citrine and Louis Weeks.

That’s how the songwriter explains his recent absence from music. The last time the rootsy singer released a full-length album — Come Back to the Five and Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee, in 2009 — he had a deal with prominent indie label Domino Records. That’s done now. But Ferree never closed the book on music. April 17, he unveils a new LP whose title might offer a glimpse into his psyche of late. It’s called Cry-Fi.

“I went into survival mode when I made the record,” says Ferree in a phone call. He’s cagey about why, but he offers hints: He’d divorced his wife. Badly wounded, he needed to perform open-heart surgery on himself. So after 14 years in D.C., Ferree moved to New Orleans to heal. That’s when new songs began to spill out of him.

“I figured, might as well do something crazy like make a record when you’re trying to survive,” says Ferree, 41. “If I’m gonna die, I’d rather die singing.”

He sings a lot — and sings well — on Cry-Fi, which trades his Americana sound for the R&B and pop stylings he explored on his 2012 two-songer. But over the album’s 10 tracks, Ferree doesn’t sound like he’s dying. He sounds like a survivor.

He describes his return from the brink on “I’m A New Man,” the album’s first single.

“I woke up that morning, I wrote the song. I wrote it pretty fast,” Ferree says, “and I needed to do it. I didn’t know why.”

Ferree returned to the D.C. area to record Cry-Fi with Ben Green at Studio V in Reston, Virginia. Then to shoot a video for “I’m A New Man” (watch it above), he chose another local spot: Showtime, the downhome bar in Northwest D.C. where he once worked.

Showtime’s owner, Paul Vivari, shows up behind a keyboard in the video, a DIY affair that takes cues from old film of Mexican narcocorrido singer Chalino Sánchez. (Vivari is releasing Cry-Fi on his new label, Trick Bag Records.) The rest of Ferree’s ensemble — most of whom don’t play on the album — includes rock drummer Mark Cisneros, plus Alice “Granny” Donahue and Richard Lynch, two members of Showtime house band Granny and the Boys.

Ferree also plans to return to D.C. to play a release show April 23 at Comet Ping Pong. But he doesn’t sound ready to come back for good. He’s got more recuperating to do.

“I’m trying to age gracefully, you know?” Ferree says. “My doctor, meaning me, or life, or whatever, told me, ‘Get down to New Orleans because it’s better for your heart.'”

Benjy Ferree plays an album release show April 17 at Saturn Bar in New Orleans and April 23 at Comet Ping Pong in D.C.

The original version of this article inaccurately said Mark Cisneros did not perform on Benjy Ferree’s Cry-Fi album. He plays horns and drums.

At the Tiny Desk, River Whyless’ members used a typewriter for rhythm, a toy piano for whimsy and a harmonium for mood, as well as a gong, multiple odd percussive accents and subtle guitar effects. There are hints of Paul Simon in their inflections and poetic phrasing, and their songs feel fresh and nicely crafted. “Life Crisis” is a song from 2015’s self-titled EP, but the others are new to me; here’s hoping we’ll have a new album in 2016.

River Whyless EP is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon)

Set List

• “Life Crisis”
• “Sailing Away”
• “Baby Brother”

Credits

Producers: Bob Boilen, Morgan Walker; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Morgan Walker, Niki Walker, Julia Reihs; Production Assistant: Kate Drozynski; photo by Jun Tsuboike/NPR

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Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Pattern Matching comes from Mount Pleasant resident Steve Kolowich, Stranger In The Alps’ sole songwriter. He’s exceptional at capturing that young-but-weary Gram Parsons style of songcraft; yet as steeped in the 1970s as Pattern Matching sometimes sounds, producer Louis Weeks (who also contributes synthesizers, vocals, guitar and an egg shaker) brings a contemporary sheen to Kolowich’s gently twangy compositions.

Kolowich says he wrote much of Pattern Matching while flying. “For a lot of us, being in an airplane is the closest we are to dying,” he told Bandwidth in a 2014 interview.

Stranger In The Alps’ new LP is streaming today on Soundcloud and Bandcamp, and arrives later this week on iTunes and Spotify. Listen to it below.

Stranger In The Alps plays Black Cat Feb. 8.