Hear the Best New Folk Music with Fresh Cuts Friday
Ready for some of the best new music we’ve heard this week? It’s a great list as you’ll see below — and as you’ll hear when you join me for my ‘Fresh Cuts’ radio hour! Listen every Friday at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific via the 24/7 stream on our website, app, or your smart speaker.
Or, just click on the Fresh Cuts stream whenever it’s convenient for you.
In the meantime, check out some of the best new music we’ve been listening to this week.
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Väsen & Hawktail, “Your Town Polska”
Fiddler Brittany Haas penned this new tune for Väsen & Hawktail’s new collaboration (out 9/20). Väsen & Hawktail brings these two groups together at long last. It is an anticipated union for fans of the genre. Väsen (Sweden) is a folk-instrumental group of epic proportion internationally. It’s no secret that their music is foundational to the members of Hawktail (USA), who you may recognize from Punch Brothers, Dave Rawlings Machine, Crooked Still, and their solo projects.
The SteelDrivers, “If My Eyes Were Blind”
New West Records will be releasing a tribute to Nashville legend David Olney (out 10/18). Originally from Rhode Island, David Olney moved to Nashville in the early 1970s and fell in with a group of legendary songwriters including Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell, John Hiatt, and Steve Earle. The tribute features new versions of David Olney songs recorded by Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Janis Ian, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, The McCrary Sisters, Dave Alvin, Mary Gauthier, Buddy Miller, Jim Lauderdale, The Steeldrivers, and more.
Laura Marling, “No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can”
“No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can” is the latest from Laura Marling’s upcoming album, Patterns in Repeat (out 10/25). If 2020’s acclaimed Song For Our Daughter was written figuratively, and from the perspective of writing to and about a fictional daughter, Patterns in Repeat was written after the birth of her daughter in 2023, and finds Laura reflecting on the patterns at play in the constellation of a family. The songs are grounded in a very specific and revelatory time in her life, diving deeper into her reckoning with the ideas and behaviors we endure through family over generations.
Amy Helm, “Amen Anyway”
Out today, Amy Helm’s latest Silver City, features her new song “Amen Anyway.” Of the song, Amy shares “The song is about being paralyzed with the fear of not being good enough and lacking faith in ourselves,” Helm explains. “It’s also about being surrounded by people who handle that with drugs and alcohol—it’s about losing people to that, and still finding the strength to say ‘Amen’ to life, despite everything.”
