It must feel somewhat daunting for serious young music-makers to link themselves to folk traditions in 2016. This is especially true if they’re separated from the original sources not just by the passage of time, but also by intervening generations of revivalists and re-interpreters. If the youngbloods really want a thorough grasp of what’s come before them, there’s that much more music to wrap their heads around. Then again, if they get overly studious about extending a lineage, they may find that their new contributions don’t seem that new at all.

Singer Kacy Anderson and fingerstyle guitarist Clayton Linthicum carve out plenty of room for play in their take on British and Appalachian folk and pre-electric blues. Though only 19 and 21, respectively, they’ve already released three albums, finally reaching a U.S. audience with their latest, Strange Country. The second cousins hail from rural Saskatchewan, where they absorbed knowledge and borrowed instruments from their elders, did their own record collecting, filled in the gaps with obscurities others posted online, and developed their musical voices in tandem, valuing freedom alongside familiarity.

Kacy & Clayton‘s recordings have occasionally been described as sounding like newly unearthed time capsules, but such reads don’t give the duo enough credit. On Strange Country, they begin with the realization that nothing is exactly new and, from there, deftly draw age-old forms and contemporary self-awareness into conversation. “If You Ask How I’m Keeping,” one of several originals, is a prime example: Over Linthicum’s genteel waltz figure, Anderson inhabits the role of a woman narrating an unfulfilling script from which she sees no escape. “Because everything I’m doing has already been done,” she sings, her murmured delivery deflating with the next line: “By the time I find my purpose, I will have burned out the sun.” Their keen, low-key observation of deadening letdowns within small-town life cycles — especially those faced by housewives — is a distant kin to Kacey Musgraves‘ interests.

Linthicum and Anderson have a sly rapport; his contributions are spry and frolicsome, while hers are mesmeric and reflective. In the title track, she drapes breathy elegance over his lively rhythmic attack. In “Brunswick Stew,” they trade vocal lines and glide into harmonizing, propelled by his cunning, jaunty figures and lean percussion. During “Over The River Charlie,” she curls and stretches her syllables to pensive effect, while he nimbly hurtles through licks, and in “Dyin’ Bed Maker,” his playing is jittery and fretful beneath her singing, which at times seems to hover gracefully in midair.

In some tracks, ambient textures like cursive strings, washy steel guitar, glistening vibraphone and enveloping reverb frame Kacy & Clayton’s performances. While none of these are exactly new inventions, they’re used to cocoon the duo’s interplay and create fleeting senses of insularity, alienation or uncertainty — qualities that feel of our moment. That’s one more way that these two ground their traditional inclinations in the here and now.

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

Few roots-leaning songwriters have inspired such intense adoration, or as much emulation, as Lucinda Williams. Since her 1998 masterpiece Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, Williams has served as a template for many Americana hopefuls; if the bristly sensuousness of her songwriting voice is impossible to reproduce, plenty of followers have at least aspired to her leathery alt-country and blues-rock aesthetic and Southern Gothic scene-setting. It’s worth noting that there seem to be just as many men as women among her acolytes.

So often, male songwriters are the ones admired for playing the role of the wanderer, free to inscribe their visions on the landscape and cultivate or sever bonds of emotional attachment as they choose. Meanwhile, songwriting women have been defined by supposedly domesticated, softer and — more to the point — lesser concerns, their natural inclination presumed to be that of spinning slight wounds and worries into major melodramas. Through sheer stubbornness and devotion to her craft, Williams has always resisted such binaries, excelling at humid portraiture of people and places, but also cathartic emotional confrontation, all of which she’s approached with primal urgency as she strains to exert her will over memories, feelings and fate. Witness the vehemence with which she once vowed to ditch a spirit-sapping lover and scour every town in her path until she recovered her joy.

Williams’ new 14-song set, The Ghosts Of Highway 20, is a road album of a sort, as well as a remarkable distillation of her writerly gifts. Traveling an old, familiar byway through the Deep South evidently conjured for her an array of images and impressions. The moony, ominous title track maps the connections between Williams’ imagining of the past as a haunted domain and the ferocity of her songwriting voice. Concrete description of muggy days, “sweet coffee milk” and hellfire warnings lights her way into a clear-eyed appraisal of conflicted childhood experiences in the bittersweet reverie “Louisiana Song.”

Elsewhere, Williams pivots to obstinacy, as she purges her existential pain through devil-may-care, down-home blues (“Bitter Memory”), fantasizes about challenging the cruelness of death (“If My Love Could Kill”) and insists upon romantic perseverance (“Can’t Close The Door On Love”). Even at her most whimsical, as in the gentle pop-folk waltz “Place In My Heart,” she accentuates the tenacity in her affection. “Even though you take my love for granted,” she sings, her drawl dissolving into a brittle vibrato, “I’m pretty strong when I admit it. You might be surprised at what I can manage, so don’t you ever forget.”

In the lyrics — all her own, with the exception of one co-write with her manager-husband Tom Overby, a cover of Bruce Springsteen‘s “Factory,” and an adaptation of an erotic exchange from Woody Guthrie‘s posthumous novel House Of Earth — Williams cultivates economy and startling directness, occasionally establishing and repeating a pattern until it passes from self-indulgence into an almost meditative space. Framing her songs is the ornate interplay of two very different guitarists who’ve contributed to her albums in the past: Bill Frisell, with his spiderwebbed, iridescent guitar figures, and the grittier but no less precise Greg Leisz, who co-produced this collection with Williams and Overby. After the guttural blues growling that pervaded her previous album (Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone) and some earlier recordings, Williams has circled back to a world-weary affect, a consciously burdened delivery style that emphasizes the emotional labor she’s performing in her music. It’s no wonder, really, that folks are willing to follow her down Southern back roads and into the visceral depths of desire.

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

His father had been a pastor, the musician said in a 2011 interview. He grew up Mennonite, foretellings of fire and brimstone drilled into his head in church. Teachers urged Wert to consider leading a congregation. But Wert wanted no part of it.

“Religion is religion,” he said, “and I’d much rather share my joys and burdens on a Friday and Saturday night over some drinks than in a church come Sunday morning.”

For the last decade, Wert has shared his joys and burdens through his music, specifically a one-man project called Possessed by Paul James. Alternating between banjo, fiddle and guitar — while stomping his foot to keep rhythm — Wert has earned acclaim for his kinetic performances, many so intense they verge on the spiritual.

But playing music is the closest Wert has come to preaching, at least professionally. His main passion is education, with a focus on special-needs kids. He’s done it for 15 years, winning “Teacher of the Year” in his Texas school district in 2012. Now he’s working on a film that tracks his recent tour, during which he traveled the country with his family in an RV, talking with education stakeholders by day and playing music by night. The documentary is called When It Breaks.

In November, Possessed By Paul James came through D.C. to play a gig at Hill Country downtown, and he stopped by WAMU beforehand to record a couple of songs for Bandwidth. Above, witness the schoolteacher’s rapturous performance of “Grandmother, Oh Grandmother,” followed by a darker tune, “Heavy.”

Subscribe to Bandwidth’s channel on YouTube, and don’t miss our awesome playlist of every Bandwidth session to date.

Bonus photos from the studio session, captured and edited by Peter Swinburne:

A thousand prior readings would be discernible in its pages, just as Appalachian and Celtic folk traditions are discernible in Shelley’s lilting voice, backed by Will Oldham and Glen Dentinger, and in the rambling, ebullient guitar she plays alongside Nathan Salsburg. Over and Even doesn’t branch into uncharted territory subject-wise, but Shelley writes the sort of relatable, cleareyed poetry about landscapes both physical and emotional that Joni Mitchell made shine on Blue and Ladies of the Canyon. While Shelley’s trills are more Emerald Isle than Golden Coast, “Over and Even” is a gorgeous dead ringer in both sound and style.

A book by Shelley would be as rooted in its surroundings as this album is. It would have rivers running through it, and birds sketched at the end of every chapter. Over and Even, the album, is traditional folk music as true as it comes despite being captured in the here and now. These are songs for any place and time, today or 50 years from now. This is a book for re-reading and then handing down.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

So McLaughlin embarked on a two-week trip to Thailand, where she started writing the music for her soon-to-be-released album, Spirit House. One album cut, “Kapunkah” (listen below), is McLaughlin’s phonetic rendering of how to say “thank you” as a woman in Thailand, and it encapsulates several personal experiences there.

“A lot of my songs are created through a stream of consciousness,” says McLaughlin. “I would be walking around and I would be singing and eating mangoes or finding spiders under our bed or walking through tall grass and turning it, eventually, into one full song.”

McLaughlin describes “Kapunkah” as joyful and rhythmically explosive, with grooves and danceable riffs on the guitar and additional bass, drums and percussion courtesy of Ethan Foote — who wrote arrangements for the album — and other ensemble members.

Even the name Spirit House was inspired by Thailand: McLaughlin says that she saw tons of tiny dollhouse-like shrines during her travels there.

“When people are building a home or piece of property [in Thailand] they also build a spirit house,” McLaughlin says. “I believe they build it in order to give the spirit a place to live. That idea resonated with me, because the songs felt like little spirits that were living within me. I thought that, ‘Oh, if I make an album, I’ll have a little spirit house for these songs to reside in.’”

Marian McLaughlin plays album release shows Sept. 4 at Creative Alliance in Baltimore and Sept. 23 at Capital Fringe in D.C.

“Garden of Ghosts,” a soulful, country-tinged track from Curtin’s Michigan Lilium — out July 24 — is about a lot of things: death, rebirth and a certain Midwestern city that’s seen better days. The indie-folk artist derived the idea from a Detroit-focused episode of Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, in which the celebrity chef visits the former boom town and takes a tour of its urban decay, also known as ruin porn.

As a University of Michigan alum, Curtin paid close attention to the episode, and she perked up when Bourdain’s host pointed out a bright spot amid the abandoned buildings: gardens that bloomed despite having no caretaker. They were called ghost gardens.

One flower in particular thrived in these gardens: the Michigan Lily.

“Even when no one’s in the house, no one’s at home tending to the garden, these lilies [sprout back up],” Curtin says. “When I looked up photos of these houses, the Michigan Lily is the one that comes back every year super orange, very tall, very bright.”

“Garden of Ghosts” is both an ode to these resilient gardens without a master and a rumination on rebirth and creativity. Curtin says that’s why she chose backing vocals that felt choral and appropriate for a funeral or memorial. The effect is the opposite of a downer, though. The tune feels spiritual and meditative until it picks up at the 1:50 mark with a swinging beat.

Curtin, who also plays with folky D.C. duo The Sweater Set, recorded “Garden of Ghosts” soon after writing it, laying down the vocals and guitars in her D.C. home and adding bass and drums in Brooklyn with local musicians there.

Michigan Lilium is primarily named after that hearty Midwestern flower, but it also suits the record itself.

“[It’s] relating to that feeling of dormancy and that feeling of the seed that’s inside you,” Curtin says. “It’s going to come out, even if you’re not tending to it.”

Sara Curtin performs Aug. 6 at Rock & Roll Hotel with The North Country and Stranger in the Alps.

Lindeman, who performs under the name The Weather Station, first found her creative footing as an actor. After playing in a number of bands in Toronto, she released her first solo album All Of It Was Mine in 2011 on Canadian label You’ve Changed Records, followed by What Am I Going To Do With Everything I Know in 2014.

This year’s Loyalty — released on North Carolina label Paradise of Bachelors — is The Weather Station’s latest, and the first with international distribution. She recorded it last winter at La Frette Studios in France with Afie Jurvanen (Bahamas) and Robbie Lackritz (Feist). The album is a lush and beautiful musical chapbook of lyrical prose poems, carried with clarity by Lindeman’s lucid voice.

In advance of her show at DC9 this Friday, I spoke with Lindeman via email, asking her about her musical evolution, her grandmother and the maleness of music, among other things. Lindeman responded from her tour van, somewhere in New England.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Bandwidth: I was a big fan of All Of It Was Mine when it came out, and I’d been highly anticipating the followup. You seem to have settled into your voice on Loyalty. There’s a maturity and confidence that comes across in presentation, but also in the themes of the songs. At the same time, your style remains distinct, with threads and reference points — material objects, plants and herbs, female friendship, snow, travel — that carry across the two albums. How have you evolved as an artist between those two records and what remains inherent to your project?

Tamara Lindeman: Absolutely, I’ve evolved a great deal. I’ve learned so much about music and songcraft and become more bold and confident. All Of It Was Mine was written quickly and without much effort — in some ways it just happened. I was much more aware writing this record, more thoughtful, and more willing to allow myself to be myself. I was also much more in control of the arrangement and the choices being made.

But it’s still the same songwriting style — observational, thoughtful, philosophical. As you say, there are threads of follow-through. I’m looking forward to much to making the next one, because I feel lightyears ahead of where I was when I made Loyalty, even.

I love how female friendship and familial relationships are at the forefront of many of your songs. In “Running Around Asking” you “ask everyone you know,” and they are all women. The brief appearance of your grandmother in that song is particularly compelling. What is your relationship with her?

My grandmother is an excellent human — so dignified, resourceful and resilient. She’s a huge role model for me. It’s that thing where you don’t have to say much to one another, but her presence is very moving to me. I feel lucky to have her around.

There are a few lyrics on Loyalty that have stuck in my head. One — “I trust you to know your own mind as I know mine” — implies a self-knowledge and self-assurance that is prevalent in your songwriting. Your songs don’t yearn or pine or ask for anything, but are observant and analytical. They present the world as you see them. Was this a conscious decision in your writing, or is that how you tend to approach the world?

I think it is how I approach the world. It did take time, however, to realize I could write like that — that it was OK to write songs the way I did, songs without any big event or conclusion. Songs that weren’t like the classic songs.

I’m really careful in how I say things, how I portray things. I don’t want to lead anyone astray — I don’t want to contribute to a false idea about the way life is. And that’s for myself, as much as anyone. Your own songs can work on you, heavily, if you’re not careful. I think the way I write is highly conservative, in a lot of ways, almost coming from my shyness. I don’t want to be dishonest or sing something I don’t believe. And sometimes that means being very specific.

“There are a lot of performers who are entertainers, and I’ve never been able to do that. I should do it. I’d probably sell more records.”

Your songs are like little prose poem vignettes that depict material objects and ephemeral moments to get at complex and pervasive emotions. There is repetition but they rarely have a chorus. The lyrics are stunning, but the melodies pull equal weight in the emotional storytelling. What is your songwriting process like? Do you have a regular writing practice?

My process is freeform — kinda messy. I tend to play guitar and find a riff and a melody, and just sing whatever comes to mind. I record it and transcribe it, try to make sense of it, and return to it, over the course of months sometimes. Generally I end up with reams of half-finished verses and ideas, which I then edit and pare down — that’s the hard part. “Tapes,” for example, I had pages and pages of verses for, but in the end I just knew it had to be three sentences… And I went with the simplest, most obvious ones. I tend to let go of a lot of the more metaphorical, poetic stuff that happens when I sing.

Whose songwriting or writing or art serve as inspiration to your own? Whose work do you return to?

So many people. I really love the songwriters and musicians in my extended community — in the scene I came out of. I feel like there is a tradition of this thoughtful, philosophical songwriting in Canada. Many people come to mind, among them Richard Laviolette, Devon Sproule, Sandro Perri, Steve Lambke, Ryan Driver, Michael Feuerstack…. Jennifer Castle I love very much. Then there are the giants: Townes Van Zandt, Gene Clark.

But I listen to a lot — I love instrumental music — I love all the guitar dudes these days, William Tyler, Steve Gunn, Nathan Salsburg. I have a soft spot for country music: Roger Miller, Skeeter Davis.

You spent a lot of your youth as an actor. But your songs are almost on the opposite spectrum of that; they’re deeply intimate and personal and honest with a seemingly thin veil between narrator and author — though maybe that speaks to your skills an actor. I know you’ve said that part of your move to music was motivated by a desire to have your own creative agency, but is there is a connection between acting and performance in how you embody the same songs and emotions on stage each night?

Hmmm… I mean, I began writing music almost in reaction to acting, and that’s why there is a thin veil between narrator and author — no veil at all, really. I mean, I probably should create a veil, soon, for my sanity.

Every live show is different, and different emotions come up in the songs. I don’t try to embody what I felt when I wrote them, but rather what’s happening, or how they make me feel now. My goal is always to be present with what is happening — to not be caught up in some imaginary idea of the show. Except when it’s a really tough show.

I feel like people can always tell, you know? When people are putting something on. There are a lot of performers who are entertainers, and I’ve never been able to do that. I should do it — I’d probably sell more records.

“I grew up in rural Ontario. People were highly sexist in both directions — girls wore makeup, boys didn’t cry. I’m glad I didn’t have to live in that world forever.”

How do you feel about being one of the lone women artists on a label called Paradise of Bachelors?

I love the label and everyone on it. Though, it is funny. The name — being the only woman. Then again, the guys at the label are highly thoughtful, sensitive humans. And my manager is a badass woman, so there’s that, too.

I’m still the only woman on my first Canadian label — You’ve Changed Records — too. I don’t know why it happens this way. I’m not sure why music is still so overwhelmingly populated by dudes. I mean, I have plenty of theories. But I’m just so used to it at this point. I blend myself in.

In some ways, I appreciate the way that music has allowed me to travel with and be close with men in this different way than one would normally. I grew up in rural Ontario. People were highly sexist in both directions — girls wore makeup, boys didn’t cry. I’m glad I didn’t have to live in that world forever. I’m glad I get to travel with packs of men in a nonromantic context. Men are lovely.

I have a lot to say about the inherent sexism of the industry, of society, of sound guys who work in bars. But it’s changing, too. I think things are getting better.

The Weather Station performs July 17 at DC9.

Davis and Richards — the Washington Post pop-music critic — began the indie-folk project Paint Branch in December 2010, releasing their first tunes under the name in 2012. This time, they sounded different, but the partnership felt the same.

“It seemed natural to work together again,” says Davis, 38, who’s also played in D.C. bands Georgie James and Title Tracks. “Chris said, ‘Hey, whenever you want to start your country band, let me know.’ We tried it, and it worked.”

On June 15, Paint Branch released its second set of recordings, a self-titled EP that recalls some of the recognizable sounds of Davis and Richards’ earlier work — two are new versions of songs that first appeared on the band’s full-length debut, I Wanna Live — but with a deeper exploration of folk, country and lyricism.

“We have a chemistry, because we’ve done this before… but it is still different, because this wasn’t the way we were writing songs before,” Davis says. “The way we are writing in Paint Branch is a distinct thing.”

The EP’s “a little bit country” feel isn’t just found in its music: Paint Branch recorded the release near Springfield, Virginia, on property owned by the duo’s pal, Elmer Sharp, who plays drums on the record. They tracked the songs in a shed fashioned into a studio.

Davis’ desire to hone in on songcraft is particularly evident in the EP’s opening track, “Patented Plagiarists” (listen below), which sets a tone that’s both mellow and subtly aggressive.

“The theme to that song is sort of in praise of people who do, and don’t say,” Davis says. “I like people — and maybe even strive to be someone — who just go and do it and don’t seek congratulations just because [they] showed up.”

But Davis acknowledges that his song could be heard in other ways.

“It’s hard to explain your own song, because hopefully the lyrics do that for you. But they don’t always,” the songwriter says. “What makes sense to you is a personal thing… and everyone projects their own interpretation onto the song.”

Paint Branch plays Red Onion Records July 19 and Paperhaus (as part of the In It Together Fest) July 30.

Culling from Virginia Traditions — a collection of recordings released by the Blue Ridge Institute at Ferrum College and acquired by the Smithsonian — Bachman assembled an 18-track compilation of traditional Virginia music for Folkways’ new monthly series, “People’s Picks.”

Bachman’s playlist spans British-rooted ballads, prison work songs, piano tunes and shades of the blues, performed by white and African-American Virginia musicians between the 1920s and 1980s. Many of the tunes are steeped in local flavor, like “Sleep On,” performed by singers Lena Thompson, Lucy Scott and Lucy Smith to a soundtrack of crab-packing. Bachman tells its story on Folkways’ website:

This is a particularly interesting regional Virginia recording and one that I’m especially excited about, as I grew up eating a lot of crabs. The song narrative could take place in any number of Eastern Shore or coastal Virginia crab houses around that time. Behind the typical choruses heard on this tune is the sound of crab bodies and legs being cracked and packed into pint and quart containers. This particular recording was made in Northumberland County on the Northern Neck, at the Rappahannock Oyster Company.

Listen to “Sleep On” and the rest of Bachman’s playlist on Folkways’ site or via Spotify, below. (The institution says the playlist will also be available on Rdio and Rhapsody.) You can stream Bachman’s latest record, River, via NPR Music’s First Listen, too.

“We had an oboe, so we wrote a part for the oboe,” says Mark Betancourt, the group’s guitarist, vocalist and primary songwriter. “For us, the sounds really came out of the instruments we happened to play.”

The serendipity didn’t end there. When Waltz Brigade recorded the EP’s title track at Asparagus Media in Takoma Park, Maryland, it got an unexpected assist from a guest percussionist.

“At some point there was a Kenyan band playing next door, and the drummer saw the congas and asked, ‘Do you need someone to play those?’” Betancourt says. “He sat down and listened to a few seconds of the track then went to town. At the end of ‘Slow Mountain’ you can hear him wailing away on the congas.”

“Slow Mountain” (listen to it below) went on to become a highlight on the band’s EP, with its sprawling bass and subdued vocals standing out among more straightforward ditties. Betancourt says that’s what made it a tough but gratifying song to finish.

“It’s the intricacy. It’s much grander than the other songs, and I just love the interplay of all the different parts and how they create a single feeling,” Betancourt says.

Waltz Brigade started when Betancourt and collaborators Jocelyn Frank (oboe) and Emily Weidner (violin) realized they needed a full band to flesh out Betancourt’s songs. They began to recruit friends, like bassist Art von Lehe, who wound up helping write “Slow Mountain.”

“I started playing guitar and [von Lehe] started playing crazy, sliding bass and we laughed about it,” Betancourt says. “I came back to it and wrote a whole arrangement around that with this Beatles-y mouth trumpet sound as the horn effect.”

Then there’s the slightly askew piano accompaniment, an intriguing touch that comes courtesy of pianist and accordionist Nancy Ku.

“It was entirely hers, and it’s one of my favorite parts of the song,” Betancourt says.

When the band formally premiered the Slow Mountain EP March 14 at von Lehe’s house — also known as the Apiary — it felt like the community effort the band has been from the beginning.

“We filled it with as many people as we could fill it with,” Betancourt says of the show. “It was a really wonderful celebration of the bands, but also of our friendships.”

Now, Waltz Brigade might end as quietly as the EP does. Betancourt says the band was more interested in crafting a quality EP than racking up critical acclaim. Its members plan to return to their own musical projects, which for Betancourt includes a solo album.

“We never came at this thinking, ‘Let’s be a band,’” Betancourt says. “It was just a project for fun.”