Leonard Cohen
A Canadian poet and novelist who became one of the most profound songwriters who ever lived, writing about love, faith, and death in a voice that only deepened with age.
Read the guide →
Paul Simon
One of the great American songwriters, who moved from folk-pop perfection with Simon & Garfunkel to a lifelong exploration of the world's rhythms, and made Graceland along the way.
Read the guide →
Emmylou Harris
A folk singer with a crystalline voice who became the great keeper of the country flame, carried Gram Parsons' vision forward, then reinvented herself as the godmother of americana.
Read the guide →
Willie Nelson
The Nashville pen-for-hire who grew his hair out, moved home to Texas, and became the most beloved outlaw in country and one of the great American voices.
Read the guide →
John Prine
A Chicago mailman turned the warmest, funniest, most humane songwriter America ever produced, behind "Angel from Montgomery" and "Sam Stone."
Read the guide →
Townes Van Zandt
The songwriter's songwriter: spare, haunted Texas folk behind "Pancho and Lefty" and "To Live Is to Fly," revered by every great writer who came after.
Read the guide →
Bob Dylan
The folksinger from Minnesota who plugged in, outraged his audience, and spent six decades proving a pop lyric could carry the weight of poetry.
Read the guide →
The Carter Family
Three musicians from the Virginia mountains who turned Appalachian ballads and hymns into the bedrock of country music. Start with the songbook, the Bristol sessions, and Maybelle's guitar.
Read the guide →
Jimmie Rodgers
The tubercular railroad brakeman from Meridian, Mississippi who fused the blues with hillbilly song and, in barely six years of recording, became the founding father of country music.
Read the guide →
Hank Williams
The rail-thin Alabama kid who wrote the plainest, most devastating songs in country music, then burned out at twenty-nine. Every songwriter since has had to reckon with him.
Read the guide →
Neil Young
The restless heart of North American rock, forever swinging between fragile acoustic ballads and the feedback-soaked electric squall of Crazy Horse.
Read the guide →
Tom Petty
Byrds-jangle guitars, Dylan phrasing, and an unshakable knack for the three-minute anthem. Forty years of songs that sound like they were always there.
Read the guide →
Nick Drake
An English folk singer who sold almost nothing in his lifetime, then quietly became one of the most beloved songwriters of the last half century. Three perfect albums of hushed voice and intricate guitar.
Read the guide →
Tyler Childers
Eastern Kentucky country that refuses to be tamed, an Appalachian songwriter turning coal-country life into modern folk canon.
Read the guide →
Zach Bryan
An Oklahoma-raised Navy sailor who went from phone-recorded songs online to selling out stadiums, writing plainspoken, big-hearted anthems that never lost their homemade grit.
Read the guide →
Charley Crockett
A street-corner busker from the Texas borderlands turned honky-tonk, blues, and vintage soul into one of the most prolific catalogs in modern American music. Start with The Man from Waco.
Read the guide →
Iron & Wine
Sam Beam's hushed, four-track folk that grew from bedroom whispers into lush, gospel-touched arrangements without ever losing its intimacy.
Read the guide →
The Red Clay Strays
Five friends from Mobile, Alabama who spent nearly a decade in Gulf Coast bars before the slow-burning ballad Wondering Why broke them wide open, fusing Southern rock, Memphis soul, and outlaw country.
Read the guide →
49 Winchester
The six-piece from Castlewood, Virginia that turned coal-country back roads and hometown heartbreak into widescreen country-rock. One of modern Americana's most acclaimed live bands.
Read the guide →
Wyatt Flores
The Stillwater, Oklahoma songwriter who turned homesickness, grief, and hard-won honesty into one of the loudest young voices of the new red-dirt country wave.
Read the guide →
Caamp
Two Ohio friends who turned porch songs and rolling banjo into one of the warmest voices in modern folk. Start with By and By, then let Lavender Days pull you in.
Read the guide →
Johnny Cash
How a sharecropper's son from the Arkansas cotton fields built one of the most recognizable voices in American music, sang for the men behind bars, and turned a lifetime of scars into the starkest, most honest records of his career.
Read the guide →
Bruce Springsteen
The bar-band kid from the Jersey shore who turned working-class life into stadium-sized rock and roll. From the widescreen romance of Born to Run to the stark hush of Nebraska, here is where to start with The Boss.
Read the guide →
Van Morrison
The Belfast singer who fused American R&B, jazz, and Irish folk into a style all his own across a career of more than forty albums. Start with the twin peaks Astral Weeks and Moondance.
Read the guide →
Drive-By Truckers
The Athens, Georgia band led by songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, built on a dense three-guitar attack. A leading voice in modern Southern rock and Americana since 1996.
Read the guide →
Stephen Wilson Jr.
A former scientist and boxer from Seymour, Indiana, Stephen Wilson Jr. fuses 1990s alternative rock with deep country roots in a sound he calls death cap rock and roll. His 2023 double album Son of Dad made him one of the most acclaimed new voices in Americana.
Read the guide →
Lukas Nelson
Singer, guitarist, and songwriter Lukas Nelson leads the country and roots-rock band Promise of the Real, which also spent years backing Neil Young. His catalog runs from classic country ballads to warm California roots rock.
Read the guide →
Chuck Prophet
Chuck Prophet is a San Francisco guitarist and songwriter who came up in the 1980s Paisley Underground band Green on Red before a long solo career, a witty, hook-driven roots-rock craftsman across albums like The Age of Miracles and Temple Beautiful.
Read the guide →
Tyler Ramsey
Tyler Ramsey is an Asheville fingerstyle guitarist and songwriter who spent a decade as lead guitarist of Band of Horses. His solo catalog runs from the 2007 debut A Long Dream About Swimming Across the Sea to 2024's New Lost Ages.
Read the guide →
Jason Scott & The High Heat
An Oklahoma City band blending country, soul, and roots rock, led by songwriter Jason Scott and his backing group The High Heat, spanning the debut album Castle Rock and the 2025 full-length American Grin.
Read the guide →
The Black Lillies
A Knoxville, Tennessee band formed in 2009 and led by songwriter Cruz Contreras, blending Appalachian folk, classic country, and roots-rock across five studio albums.
Read the guide →
Holler Choir
An Asheville, North Carolina band led by songwriter Clint Roberts, blending Appalachian old-time and bluegrass instrumentation with close-harmony folk-rock songwriting.
Read the guide →
Amble
Amble is an Irish folk trio formed in Dublin in 2022, known for close three-part harmonies and acoustic string arrangements, whose debut album Reverie followed a run of EPs.
Read the guide →
Gillian Welch
The spare, harmony-driven Americana of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, two voices and two guitars making some of the most timeless music of the last thirty years. Start with The Harrow & The Harvest.
Read the guide →
The Milk Carton Kids
The Los Angeles duo Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan, making spare, close-harmony folk in the tradition of Simon & Garfunkel. Start with The Ash & Clay.
Read the guide →
Gregory Alan Isakov
A South-African-born songwriter and Colorado market farmer making hushed, cinematic, star-gazing folk. Start with This Empty Northern Hemisphere.
Read the guide →
Tom Waits
The gravel-voiced songwriter who went from boozy piano balladeer to junkyard-blues experimentalist, building one of the most singular catalogs in music. Start with Rain Dogs.
Read the guide →
Joni Mitchell
The most influential songwriter of her generation, from the confessional landmark Blue to her adventurous jazz turn. Start with Blue.
Read the guide →
Wilco
Jeff Tweedy's Chicago band that grew from alt-country roots into adventurous, experimental rock. Start with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Read the guide →