Hear the Best New Folk Music with Fresh Cuts Friday

Discover the Best New Music of the Week!

We’ve pulled together some of the best new music we’ve heard lately — and you can hear it all on Fresh Cuts, my weekly radio hour. Tune in every Friday at 2pm ET / 11am PT on Folk Alley’s 24/7 stream — available on our website, mobile app, or your smart speaker too.

Prefer to listen on your own time? Just click on the Fresh Cuts stream whenever it works for you.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at some exciting new music that’s caught our ears this week!

Courtney Barnett, “Site Unseen” (feat. Waxahatchee)

Creature of Habit (out 3/27/2026) is the upcoming album from Courtney Barnett featuring “Site Unseen” (feat. Waxahatchee). Creature of Habit marks a decisive new chapter in Courtney Barnett’s musical evolution. It’s a bold, emotionally resonant record that explores the central question: how to get out of your own way so you can truly feel your life. Written in the wake of a relocation from Australia to Los Angeles and the closure of her long-running label Milk! Records, Barnett was grappling with changes that put the future of both her life and career in question. Rather than internalizing those feelings, she decided to bring all this swirling confusion directly into the recording process.

Boy Golden, “Like a Child”

Canadian singer/songwriter Liam Duncan’s new album Best of Our Possible Lives (out 2/13/2026) features the song “Like a Child.” Boy Golden explains of the track, “Imagine your life as a river, flowing, changing. Sometimes, you run into rocks in the river. Obstacles. If you hit a rock and get stuck, the river will rush on while you remain in place. This song is about being soft. To be soft, to be present, to be adaptable, to be vulnerable, to be ‘Like A Child’; this is how we flow around the rocks, this is how we erode them. Eventually, the rocks become smooth, and you will forget they were ever there as you flow effortlessly past them.”

The Steel Wheels, “Cold Call”

The Virginia-based band The Steel Wheels are releasing their latest self-titled album on digital stream on March 30, with the song “Cold Call.” On the new song, primary singer/songwriter Trent Wagler shares: “All of life is learning to lose. Accepting that failure is a part of growth, death is a part of life, and dreams sometimes come true, but even those don’t last. We’re all learning to lose. Can the awareness of impending loss give us the motivation to tell everyone we know we love them?!”

Laurie Lewis, “Hell Broke Loose in Georgia”

Laurie Lewis’ upcoming album O California! prominently features her band The Right Hands. Of the fiddle tune “Hell Broke Loose in Georgia,” fiddler Brandon Godman shares that it’s “one of my favorite fiddle tunes, especially when playing it with the Right Hands. I love the way it moves through the registers, and is the perfect combination of simple and complex.”

More this week on Fresh Cuts!