Seamus Cater and Norwegian guitarist Fredrik Rasten have an exceptional ear for space — knowing what to leave out as much as what to put in. Across six unhurried songs, Strange the Grass Grows breathes and blooms with quiet confidence, its traditional ballads and originals handled with such grace and elegance that it stays with you long after the final note.

Magic Tuber Stringband have announced Heavy Water, out May 22nd — their most expansive album yet, rooted in the ecological and human fallout of nuclear arms production in rural South Carolina. Lead single Tribute to the Angels draws on Hilda Doolittle’s wartime poetry and old-time fiddle tradition, its luminous harmonics hovering between folk memory and grief. Spring tour dates are forthcoming.

Darkly cinematic and compellingly unhurried, “laundry | blood” finds Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, and Macie Stewart at their most brooding — a slow-burn highlight from BODY SOUND. A live performance video directed by Derrick Alexander accompanies the single. The album arrives March 20th via International Anthem and the trio are perfomring live across the East Coast US, London’s Cafe OTO, and Europe this spring.

Recorded at Capitol Records in 1971, “10,000 Greyhounds” is a frantic, jangle-blues workout that sends Tommy into scats and the band into sprawling jams before spiraling into an ebullient pocket epic of blissed self-discovery. It’s the latest preview of Echo Park, the 91-year-old LA legend’s long-lost album, mixed and mastered by Jim O’Rourke and due March 27th.

In the Low Light is one of the strongest albums of its kind this year — a record that puts songs and the emotive stimuli that drove them front and centre. Written in the shadow of profound personal loss, Lucy Kitchen strikes a remarkable balance between darkness and light, unflinching in its grief yet quietly alive with hope.

Almost Proustian in its relationship with memory, Proof Enough goes beyond mere nostalgic effect. Michael Cormier-O’Leary became a father while recording these six songs, and his writing is full of hopes and fears alongside the quiet determination to live well. He has become an exceptional songwriter, alchemising human concerns into low-key poetry and backing it with a nuanced, delightfully off-kilter grasp of song dynamics.

With Stray Dogs, Hrishikesh Hirway opens a debut LP shaped by grief, memory, and the passage of time. The track — a gentle folk song co-written and performed with Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam — traces two packs: stray dogs in his mother’s Indian hometown and a group of teenage friends burning through a New Haven summer. Produced by Phil Weinrobe, In the Last Hour of Light arrives April 24th …

Filmed at The Lilliput Press in Dublin, Ye Vagabonds’ live performance of Mayfly finds Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn joined by Alain McFadden on harmonium, synths and mandolin, Kate Ellis on cello, and Caimin Gilmore on double bass. Taken from their acclaimed album All Tied Together, it’s a warm, unhurried rendering of a song about loss, belonging, and the people who slip quietly away.

Tristan Allen has shared the video for Act III: Rite, the latest visual from Osni the Flare, out March 27th via RVNG Intl. The album — a creation myth spanning several acts — was built from toy instruments, ocarinas, and wordless vocals recorded in a Brooklyn apartment overlooking a cemetery. With each new video, Allen’s meticulous, puppet-threaded world of myth and fire comes further into view.

Camille Camille returns with In A Song, a dusty and atmospheric new single out now via Labelman. Built around insistent train-like percussion and ambitious fingerpicking, the track sees Belgian singer-songwriter Camille Willemart leaning into psychedelic folk territory — restless, searching, and quietly assured. The first taste of an upcoming album, it’s an ode to doubt and the pull of new beginnings.

Grief can do strange things to a songwriter. For Alela Diane, the death of Portland folk legend Michael Hurley last year didn’t close a door — it flung one wide open. Who’s Keeping Time?, her seventh album and debut on Loose Music, arrives May 22nd as a communal, attic-recorded reckoning with time, memory, and the enduring pull of song. Listen to lead single ‘California’.

Juni Habel has shared the video for Stand So Still, the latest single from her upcoming third album Evergreen In Your Mind (out April 10th via Basin Rock). Shot by Malin Longva at Verdens Ende, Norway, the visuals match the song’s quiet ambiguity — a folk gem that opens like something ancient before drifting, on Habel’s voice alone, somewhere entirely its own.