★★★★★ Anna and Harvey Elias moved from Yorkshire to a rural setting in the English Midlands since which they have been influenced by both the music and the ethos they discovered in the local folk scene. These influences have been brought to light in their debut album.

Our latest live session is from Edinburgh singer/songwriter Adam Holmes who now at the age of twenty has been a Celtic Connections Young Traditional Musician finalist and in February this year achieved the huge accolade of a Radio 2 Folk Award nomination for Best Newcomer.

★★★★★ Gudrid Hansdóttir’s work is a stirring mix of contemporary classical music and rural inspired folk, combining songs of English language with bewitching fables in her native Faroese tongue, an insular Nordic language spoken by fewer than 50,000 people.

On this week’s Friday Folk Music Club we have Jens L Thomsen, Lisa Hannigan & Richard Hawley, Horla Patrie, Alasdair Roberts, Tim Eriksen, Our Feathered Embers, The Boxer Rebellion, Alexi Murdoch, Wye Oak and bluesman Fred McDowell!

Tassili offers existing fans of Tinariwen more of what they love while embracing influences that are sure to bring them to a wider audience. In returning to their desert roots, Tinariwen have succeeded in shaking off the two most potent symbols of their origins – the gun and the electric guitar, yet still affirm their right to exist as a desert people.

★★★★★ Cocos Lovers are a band of huge scale and huge sound whose compositions are a heady concoction of something for everyone. Read our Elephant Lands review.

Though Balmorhea’s studio recordings never fail to impress, their songs have always been most powerful and affecting when performed live. Live At Sint-Elisabethkerk captures their magic.

★★★★★ Martin Simpson’s latest album, Purpose and Grace, is in many ways the epiphany of his career. It features a stunning array of artists including Richard Thompson, June Tabor and Dick Gaughan. A classic! You can preview the whole album for one week on Folk Radio UK!

Lisa Hannigan will release her much-anticipated second album, ‘Passenger’, on October 10: the follow-up to her Mercury-nominated debut, ‘Sea Sew’.

★★★★★ Benjamin Francis Leftwich’s latest release Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm feels like an album better left for background listening; moments of beauty and odd lyrical observations that grab but never quiet hold for long enough.

London based Vadoinmessico’s latest single ‘Pepita, Queen of the Animals’ is due for release on September 19th. Listen now.

Swedish duo Mire Kay return with a beautiful video for their second single ‘So You Learned’, taken from the debut EP Fortress.