From a Dutch delta road trip to a Birmingham apartment tribute, via London, Nashville, and Atlanta: five artists using folk’s oldest tools to get somewhere genuinely new. We bloody love them all.
Joseph Turner & The Dudes of Hazard – Travelin’ Heart
Joseph Turner & The Dudes of Hazard have made an excellent Americana-tinged indie stunner: organic, wide-open, and very difficult to sit still to.
“Travelin’ Heart” began as a voice memo captured on a phone during a road trip along the East Coast, which is both the origin story and the instruction manual for how to listen to it. The track has a fantastic driving groove; built on acoustic guitar, mandolin, and pedal steel, the latter recorded across multiple locations before the whole thing was mastered in Nashville, and the geography of that process bleeds into the sound itself. Verses have a lovely close-knit kind of intimate and feel close-miked; while the chorus opens out into something much bigger. The standout is definitely the vocal but there’s a lovely craft across the whole track, and it’s the kind that makes emotions hit right where they need to.
Joseph Turner writes from the Dutch delta town of Hellville, which sounds implausible but turns out to suit him. His background is in rock bands, and that lineage sits just under the surface of his songwriting: the pop hooks are real, the country-leaning instincts are genuine, and the occasional noise when it feels right is deployed without apology. The Dudes of Hazard are a rotating cast of collaborators, longstanding and newly met, who step in for both recording and live work. For fans of Noah Kahan and Zach Top, this is exactly the kind of modern folk-rooted indie that earns its comparisons. A great track.
Fiona Amaka – Love that fills my world (acoustic version)
Fiona Amaka’s acoustic reimagining is a stunning transformation, turning a rock staple into something intimate, warm, and entirely its own.
This is an orchestral folk reworking of a track that already had an audience, and what makes it work is the confidence of the conversion. The arrangement strips away the drive of the original and replaces it with something that just breathes in a different way. It’s much slower, more spacious, and the kind of vibe that makes you sit with each lyric a little longer than a rock arrangement would allow. Understandably, it has picked up new followers and social engagement precisely because it does not feel like a stripped-down version of something better. It feels like its own complete thing, which is a very impressive feat.
Fiona Amaka is a London singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose 2025 run of singles covered more ground than most artists manage in three years. “No Daylight” and “Cowards and Shadows” leaned into her soulful indie-rock side; “Honesty (Psalm 139)” introduced a spiritual dimension; the chirpy indie-pop of “Desert Flower” earned significant radio play and confirmed her as a genuinely versatile artist. Her influences run from Stevie Nicks to Smashing Pumpkins, which tells you something useful: this is someone who knows exactly how wide the space between delicate and loud can be, and is entirely comfortable anywhere inside it. It’s fantastic.
Tree City USA – Open Waters (Acoustic Version)
Tree City USA have made a genuinely moving acoustic tribute here, it’s bare, honest and completely beautiful
“Open Waters (Acoustic Version)” was recorded by Danny Hammons in his downtown Birmingham, Alabama apartment, banjo replacing lead guitar, and the DIY vibe is all there in best possible way. The track is a tribute to Jordan Sheldon, a skateboarder and drummer who died in May 2008, and the stripping back of the arrangement is the point: what remains is the melody, the words, and the specific fragile quality that comes from a recording made in a home space at close range. It’s sparse and honest in all the right ways; and the lyric of “shine on my friend, i’ll see you when it’s over” genuinely hits hard.
Tree City USA emerged from Birmingham’s hardcore scene in 2007 around guitarist/vocalist Seth Mitchell and keyboardist/synth player Danny Hammons, who wanted to find quieter territory. Their 2009 debut single “The Resting State” was recorded with Joseph McQueen at Echelon Studios, the same facility known for work with As I Lay Dying and Jimmy Eat World. This return, built around loss and memory, is a beautifully worthy one. It’s touching stuff.
Audra Watt – Any Day Now
Audra Watt’s “Any Day Now” is a brilliantly realised opening statement: warm, jazzy, and sharp enough to land its message without feeling like a lecture.
“Any Day Now” leads off Watt’s ‘Start Late’ album, and it earns that position. The track is built on jazzy chord progressions with a muted trumpet sound, giving it a 1920s character that sits comfortably inside a contemporary pop framework. I wish I could record vocals this crisply, Audra’s vocal just sounds beautiful, and it serves up the song in style. This should be on every ‘easy listening’ radio station, cos it’s crafted so well, and the musicianship has a real quality to it.
Audra Watt is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter whose sound sits at the junction of pop, country, and a vintage jazz sensibility that surfaces in chord choices and arrangement texture rather than pastiche. “Start Late” is a project built around a specific argument: that your own timeline is valid, and that self-reinvention does not require a particular age or circumstance. It’s a lovely concept, and one that I share a belief in, especially when the music sounds as good as this. A great single.
Jeremy Parks – The Tourist
Jeremy Parks makes “The Tourist” a gorgeous indie folk meditation on memory and distance: the kind of song that finds something true in a photograph and refuses to let it go.
“The Tourist” is about the complicated light that nostalgia throws: the way an old photograph can reveal something you never noticed at the time, and make it suddenly matter. Parks wrote, produced, and performed the track himself, bringing in Niel Brooks for mixing, mastering, and bass, and Dillon Napier on drums. The result is a genuine indie folk stunner; a beautiful vocal, lyrics and distant guitar work, before things unfold into a tasteful full band arrangement that should be all over the radio. It’s got a lovely groove to it too, occasionally slowing to a shuffle before a rhythmic crescendo, with handclaps, at the end.
Jeremy Parks is an Atlanta-based multi-instrumentalist who takes on songwriter, producer, and performer roles simultaneously, which is a particular kind of creative pressure that tends to either flatten a record or sharpen it. On the evidence of “The Tourist,” it’s definitely making things exciting. His connection to the material is immediate, the kind that comes from writing about something you have genuinely thought about rather than something that seemed like a good subject. For fans of new, introspective indie folk with a beautiful production aesthetic, this one might just be your new favourite. A great track.