I keep a list in my head all year. Every record that stops me mid-sentence, every singer somebody grabs my sleeve about at a festival, every name I scribble down so I do not forget it. This is that list, all written out: twenty-five artists we think are carrying this music into 2027.
Some of them are family around here, interviewed in these pages and already part of our story. The rest earned their way on through the records. We could not stop playing them.
Every entry hands you a starting point: one song and where to find them. Start there. Then go see them live when they roll anywhere near your town. That is the whole religion of this place.
One housekeeping note before the music starts: the numbers are for reference only, to help you find your place and tell us who we missed. This is not a ranking, and the artists appear in no particular order. Number 25 matters as much as number 1 around here.
Oklahoma keeps raising songwriters who can level you with a whisper. Ken Pomeroy is the newest one. She is twenty-two, Cherokee, raised in Moore, and her album Cruel Joke just carried off the Americana Emerging Act of the Year honor. The critics at NPR have called her a generational talent, and they do not hand those out like flyers. One verse of "Cicadas" and you will understand the fuss.
Start here: "Cicadas"
Find her: https://www.kenpomeroymusic.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/kenpomeroymusic/ · Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kenpomeroymusic
Mon Rovîa was born in Liberia and raised in the Tennessee hills, and he calls what he plays Afro-Appalachian. Sounds like a made-up word until you hear it, then it sounds like the only word that fits. His debut, Bloodline, mixes mountain folk with the rhythms he was born into, and "Heavy Foot" got itself nominated for Song of the Year at the Americana Honors. Two homelands, one voice, no seams showing.
Start here: "Heavy Foot"
Find him: https://monroviaboy.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/monroviaboy/ · Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MonRoviaBoyMusic
Some voices you hear once and start checking tour dates. Kashus Culpepper has one of those: Alabama soul poured over country twang, recorded in Muscle Shoals, because a record like this has an address and that is it. His debut Act I put him on GRAMMY.com's watch list and the Americana Emerging Act ballot in the same breath. Rolling Stone says 2026 is his breakthrough year. Far as we can tell, they are running about a year behind.
Start here: "Alabama Beauty Queen"
Find him: https://kashusculpepper.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/kashculpeppermusic/
Leave it to a Canadian to make one of the most American-sounding records of the year. Liam Duncan records as Boy Golden, and Best of Our Possible Lives plays like a tape you found in the glove box of a good car: folk-pop heart, old country clothes, hooks that will not get out of your head. It earned him an Emerging Act nomination and a turn at the Ryman. His label calls it roots music from a galaxy far away. We just call it the record we keep putting back on.
Start here: "Suffer"
Find him: https://www.boygolden.ca/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/boygolden/
Brothers Ocie and Wes Crowe grew up in New Orleans singing together, and it shows in the way siblings can finish each other's lines without looking up. Their debut Made To Wander is two voices and one heartbeat. A live clip of "Where Did I Go Wrong" piled up tens of millions of views, which proves the internet gets one right now and then. The Americana Honors noticed too.
Start here: "Where Did I Go Wrong"
Find them: https://www.croweboys.com/
Seventeen. I will say it again: seventeen years old. Wyatt Ellis plays mandolin like the thing owes him money, he is already the IBMA Momentum Instrumentalist of the Year, he cut a duet record with Peter Rowan, and he was the youngest performer at AmericanaFest this year. The rest of us were still learning to drive. Bluegrass is in good hands for the next sixty years or so.
Start here: "West Dakota Rose"
Find him: https://www.wyattellis.com
Bella White grew up in Calgary, lives in New Orleans now, and started out in bluegrass before she started wandering somewhere moodier. Her third record, A Sign in the Weather, is the sound of the wandering paying off. We have played it enough times to say it plain: she is one of the best doing it right now.
Start here: "Pink Living Room"
Find her: https://bellawhitemusic.com/ · Instagram @bellawhitemusic · Facebook @thebellawhitemusic
Willow Avalon writes her own songs and produces her own records, and she sounds like classic country never left the building. She is Georgia-born, Nashville-based, and unbothered by trends. Her debut Southern Belle Raisin' Hell landed on year-end best lists, the Grand Ole Opry put her in its NextStage class of newcomers, and the follow-up, Pink Pocket Pistol, landed this summer. The title tells you the attitude. The singing backs it up with interest.
Start here: "Gettin' Rich, Goin' Broke"
Find her: https://www.willowavalonmusic.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/willowavalon/ · Facebook https://www.facebook.com/willowavalonmusic/
Great name, better band. Frankie Cassidy and Nathan Ross met at Montana State, armed themselves with a guitar, a mandolin, and harmonies close enough to share a coat, and called it Buffalo Traffic Jam. Then "Fool's Gold" climbed to No. 3 on Billboard's Adult Alternative chart, Billboard named them a Chartbreaker, and their debut Pictures of You came out on Arista this summer. Bozeman's secret is officially out of the bag.
Start here: "Fool's Gold"
Find them: https://www.buffalotrafficjam.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/buffalotrafficjam/
Lily Fitts came up the modern way, singing into a phone until the phone could not hold everybody watching. Her debut Getting By turned that crowd into a sold-out first headline tour, and folks like Noah Kahan and The Lumineers were believers early. What sells it for us is the writing: modern Americana with an old soul's memory for the small details most people walk right past.
Start here: "Getting By"
Find her: https://www.lilyfittsmusic.com/music · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lilyfittsmusic
Around here, one credential outranks most: Jobi Riccio holds a John Prine Songwriting Fellowship from Newport. That is the songwriters' songwriter pipeline, and she came through it. Her second album, Face The Feeling, mixes country-folk roots with a 90s indie snarl, and NPR Music called her highly, highly, highly recommended. Three highlys. John would have approved of the economy.
Start here: "Buzzkill"
Find her: https://www.jobiriccio.com/
They call Angela Autumn the Rose of Appalachia, but do not let the pretty name fool you. Her music is clawhammer banjo cracked open with psychedelic and indie rock until the pieces spark. She was named one of AmericanaFest's brightest rising stars this year, her second record Believer is out, and "Electric Lizard" is the song that follows people home and sits on their porch awhile.
Start here: "Electric Lizard"
Find her: https://www.angelaautumnmusic.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/angelaautumnmusic/ · Facebook https://www.facebook.com/AngelaAutumnMusic/
Folks have started calling Brennan Wedl the heir apparent to Lucinda Williams. That is a heavy coat to hand a young singer, but her self-titled album on ANTI- Records wears it fine: smoky alto, slide guitar, alt-country with sawdust on its boots. If you keep one name off this list in your back pocket to brag about later, make it hers.
Start here: "Pretty Little Fantasy"
Find her: https://www.brennanwedl.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/brennanwedl/ · Facebook https://www.facebook.com/brennanw.music/
Mountain Grass Unit comes out of Birmingham playing bluegrass like a band raised on jam bands, because they were. The picking is strictly traditional. Where the songs wander off to once the picking starts is anybody's guess, and that is the fun of it. IBMA Momentum Band of the Year, a Grand Ole Opry debut this past August, and a debut full-length called Appalachian Smoke. Smoke is right.
Start here: "Window for a Friend"
Find them: https://www.mountaingrassunit.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mountaingrassunit/
Coleman Jennings put out two records this year, the EP Ride On and the debut album Lead You Home. He sings western folk and honky-tonk with a strange, hypnotic vibrato, straight out of the Townes Van Zandt lineage, and Lead You Home is one of the finest western records we have heard this year.
Start here: "Ride On"
Find him: https://coleman-jennings.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/coleman.jennings/
Sally Buice and Molly Rochelson were busking on Knoxville street corners as teenagers before they were The Montvales, and street corners teach you harmonies you cannot fake. Now they are based in Cincinnati, and their record Path of Totality is left-of-center indie-country with a radical folk heart: banjo, guitar, and two voices leaning all the way into each other like they are sharing a secret.
Start here: "World of Trouble"
Find them: https://www.themontvales.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/themontvales/ · Facebook https://www.facebook.com/themontvales/
Waylon Wyatt is nineteen, from Hackett, Arkansas, and he already has two RIAA Gold singles and a VEVO Artist to Watch tag, all before he can legally buy a beer in the rooms he sells out. His red-dirt folk-country is raw in the way you cannot manufacture in a studio; you can only stand close and record it. "Arkansas Diamond" sounds like a kid from a small town singing like the whole state is listening. More and more, it is.
Start here: "Arkansas Diamond"
Find him: https://waylonwyattmusic.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/waylonwyatt/
Thomas Csorba is a Texas storyteller in his mid-20s, and the company he keeps tells you plenty: he has spent the last few years opening for some of the best songwriters working today, and those folks do not invite just anybody up there. His self-produced Tender Country leans quiet folk and classic country. It sounds like a small record until you catch yourself playing it the fourth time through.
Start here: "The Big Time"
Find him: https://www.thomascsorba.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thomascsorbamusic/ · Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thomascsorbamusic/
You know Colby around here. We put him in the Spotlight, and Americana Highways ran our interview with him this fall, because the kid from Virginia writes for the people country radio forgot: the ones working the jobs and living the lives that do not make the highlight reel. His album One for the Losers is an anthem collection for everybody still swinging. Start with the title track and see if you make it to the second chorus without singing along. We did not.
Start here: "One for the Losers"
Find him: https://www.colbyhelms.com/about · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/colby.t.helms/ · Facebook facebook.com/colbythelmsmusic
Charissa Hoffman plays the ukulele like it owes her an apology and she intends to collect. What she does on that little instrument should not be possible, and yet here is Horizon, folk music stretched wide open, strange and thoughtful and beautiful. Our full conversation with her runs in the November Spotlight, and there is a signed copy of the record waiting for one of you when it does. "Forward Motion" is the door. Walk on through.
Start here: "Forward Motion"
Find her: https://www.charissahoffman.com/about
Jack Blocker's Spotlight runs right here on November 3, the same week his album Big Jefe lands, and that timing is no accident on our part. The Texas songwriter writes with a grin in one hand and a knife in the other, funny right up to the line that cuts you. We are telling you now so you can say you were early.
Start here: "Big Jefe"
Find him: jackblocker.com · Instagram instagram.com/jackforestblocker · Facebook facebook.com/jackforestblocker
Out in Wyoming, Wyatt Lowe fronts his band the Mayhem, playing blues-soaked Americana built for rooms that still dance. His album Deserts is our December Spotlight, and the title track is the whole picture in one song: a guitar slinger who writes like he reads the land. The West has a new voice, and it is worth the drive to hear it where it lives.
Start here: "Deserts"
Find him: http://wyattlowemusic.com/ · Instagram instagram.com/wyattlowe · Facebook facebook.com/wyattloweblues
Matt Lorenz is a one-man band, and I mean that literally: guitar, a drum kit built out of a suitcase and whatever else was lying around, and a throat-singing growl that fills a room all by itself. His seventh album, To Go On, arrived this fall, written in the wake of losing his sister, and our feature on him runs November 10. You have to see him live to believe the arithmetic. The records make a strong case in the meantime.
Start here: "Put Your Phone Down"
Find him: https://thesuitcasejunket.com/full-bio
Jack Barksdale has been writing songs wise past his years since he was a kid in Texas, and his EP Battleground is where the kid fully becomes the writer. The title track, with Julian Taylor riding along, is a young man drawing his lines in public and daring you to cross them. Our Q&A with him runs November 24. Get in now, before there is a line.
Start here: "Battleground"
Find him: https://www.jackbarksdale.com/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jackbarksdalemusic/ · Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jackbarksdalemusic/
Ava Claire was our very first Six-String Spotlight, back in October, and her EP Honestly is still the record we hand people who ask what this whole thing is about: five songs, sung by a voice that sounds like it already lived the whole story twice. If she is new to you, today is a good day to fix that.
That is our twenty-five, in no particular order, as promised. Some of them will break big in 2027. Some will stay the best-kept secret in their corner of the country. Every one of them is worth a night of your listening, and most of them are worth a tank of gas.
Now it is your turn: who did we miss? Tell us the artist you would stake your reputation on, the one you keep pressing on your friends at the cookout. We read every reply, and half the names on next year's list will probably start with one of yours.
