Don’t miss Normafest – a wonderful weekend in celebration of all things to do with folk music legend Norma Waterson in early January. Featuring: Stick in the Wheel, Lynched, The Furrow Collective, The Gift Big Band which will include Norma, Martin Carthy, Eliza Carthy, Neill MacColl & special guest Richard Hawley.

David Simard’s second full-length collection, The Heavy Wait, has arrived after being pieced together over eight years, and it’s a real spine-tingler. An atmospheric, brooding, and compelling collection of dark-yet-pretty folk songs that artfully wend their way into one’s brain, and lodge there.

Louise’s magnificently accomplished show is not only a polished and professional presentation but also a superb evening’s entertainment – an assessment enthusiastically endorsed by the organisers and their capacity audience.

There’s many an artist out there mining America’s rich musical history and shaping it into their own experiences and observations; Jeff Crosby may well be one of the best.

If this is your first dip into the music of The Baird Sisters, then let it not be your last. Until You Find Your Green is one of the most beautiful albums of 2016, one I know I’ll constantly be revisiting.

An engaging, visionary record that blends many different influences and styles into a compelling whole, a very personal ode to a strange and enchanting land that will forever continue to baffle and intrigue.

Anglo-French acoustic dance combo Topette!! are on tour through December (ft. Andy Cutting, James Delarre, Julien Cartonnet, Tania Buisse, and Barnaby Stradling), one band you know you can keep warm to no matter how cold the venue…you just dance! Plus they are recording an album…all fantastic news!

Our Song of the Day is from singer-songwriter Gitta De Ridder with her new video for Wanderer taken from her recently released album Feathers. The video features footage shot by Gitta over the time she made the album travelling between Devon, London and the Dutch countryside.

Watch Break Out, the new music video from Copenhagen-based electronic folk-rock outfit Rainbrother. Taken from their forthcoming album Tales From The Drought, produced by Noah Georgeson (The Strokes, Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart).

These two well-travelled veterans of the folk music scene have still got a great deal to say and can still say it with style. That they have chosen to say it together, for this album at least, is something we should all be grateful for.

Lady Maisery’s live performance banishes thoughts of the cold and a sore throat for our reviewer Thomas as he declares: Lady Maisery have proved themselves one of the most invigorating and talented live acts around. They are a rare tonic in these troubled times.

Laura Marling has announced details of her sixth album Semper Femina. Watch her directorial debut with the video for the first fruits of the record and the album’s opening track, Soothing.