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 — including the latest from Keb’ Mo’, Lizzie No, Margaret Glaspy, Sophie Wellington, and more. 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!
Keb’ Mo’, “Fussing and Fighting”
Keb’ Mo’ is about to release his most stripped-down and intimate album to date on The Breakdown (out 8/21/2026) he does something he has never done before: strips back his recordings to just his guitar, voice, and carefully selected vocal contributions from the Soweto Gospel Choir and the gospel sextet Take 6. The 10-song collection was recorded at his home studio outside Nashville and written in the wake of life-saving open heart surgery, the end of his nearly 20-year marriage, and a period of profound personal upheaval.
Lizzie No, “The One I Love and the Freedom Road”
The compilation Outlaws’ Almanac (out 6/19/2026) was created in response to the 250th anniversary of the United States of America from the perspective of the outlaws and the marginalized. The record features artists like Kaia Kater, Olivia Ellen Lloyd, Tray Wellington, Nathan Evans Fox, and executive producer Lizzie No. Outlaws’ Almanac is a compilation album that melds folk, Americana, roots, and more to respond to the occasion of this nation’s anniversary, and to be of use to the American people. The album finds its roots in slave rebellion, in protest songs, and in traditional tunes. It roars into the present with full-throated visions for a better future.
Margaret Glaspy, “Michigan”
Margaret Glaspy’s new album I Am Both (out 8/7/2026), produced by Joe Henry, features her new song “Michigan.” The song imagines a post-breakup escape to the Midwest. “I was in Michigan a couple years back and had a really beautiful time, and thought about how New Yorkers sometimes fantasize about the countryside as a retreat from the intensity of the city,” Glaspy says. “It turned into a song about someone going through a bad breakup, and then deciding to just leave the city behind.”
Sophie Wellington, “Scolding Wife”
Sophie Wellington was raised in a musical community with contra and square dances, choirs, music festivals, and camps. Their latest album Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still (out 7/10/2026) with the fiddle tune “Scolding Wife.” The song offers a clear example of Wellington’s approach. A Marion Reece fiddle tune dating back to the early 20th century and traditionally done in AEAC# tuning (also known as Black Mountain Rag, Calico, Open A, or Drunken Hiccups tuning), here is played on solo flatpick guitar, with its famous left-hand pizz triad transposed to 12th-fret harmonics, accompanied by an overdub of percussive dance. Wellington’s tapping, scuffing, and sliding perfectly frames the song, and seemingly places its soundworld squarely in Appalachia. Yet, complexities and modernizations lurk just below the surface.
More this week on Fresh Cuts!
Brent Cobb – “Live a Song, Write a Memory”
Chris Jones & The Night Drivers – “They Burdens are Greater Than Mine” – ft. Jim Lauderdale
Fruit Bats – “The Landfill”
Jesse Welles – “Masks Off”
Justin Hiltner & Jon Weisberger – “Marinda”
Karine Polwart & Pippa Murphy – “After Hours”
Pharis & Jason Romero – “Hey Babe”
Rachel Summer & Traveling Light – “Yodelay”
Sad Daddy – “Let’s Go Fishin”
