Ann Powers

For every insurgent new country star, Nashville boasts a dozen musicians who've perfected their art over many years. Hear a session with one such exceptional, undersung talent.

The mourning process reminds those who love to dance together that to gather on a dance floor is to open one's arms to life. We asked 11 writers to share the club song that changed their lives.

After doing everything from punk karaoke to slinging tacos, Lauren Gilbert now leads one of Music City's wildest live acts.

The Alabama singer's first solo album in nearly a decade, combines folk intimacy, rock heft and country twang. White says he fought against the songs on Beulah, out Aug. 19, until they poured out.

Waldon has become a key player in the East Nashville music community by penning songs that capture the heartland through twentysomething eyes.

The country singer-songwriter's second album boasts a big sound. But it keeps beautiful details intact, as Clark speaks for those often pushed aside within traditional storytelling narratives.

On his fourth solo album, the Americana singer-songwriter considers the tilted fulcrum of a dissolving marriage in order to confront the allure and the cost of restlessness.

On a quietly violent new collaboration, the duo confronts their own debt to the soul of gospel music while acknowledging their inevitable distance from it.

On Rae's third album, the singer-songwriter's fleshed-out jams and delicate, jazz-informed ballads examine the subtle trajectories emotions can take.

Patterson casts light on the assumption people make about a woman: that she's inexhaustibly strong, yet mysteriously dangerous. "I'm human, I'm human," she reminds us.

After several days of strange messages and teases, Radiohead has finally released a new song. Called "Burn The Witch," it arrives via a claymation video with echoes of a cult-classic horror film.

The music of the singer Anohni, who was previously known as Antony Hegarty, has long explored identity. On her new album Hopelessness, she turns self-examination into explicit, unsparing activism.

In the nearly four decades of music Prince made, propriety and prejudice were regularly vanquished by good humor and elegant lust.

Best known for her work with Nickel Creek, Watkins explores a pop palette in her solo career. In "Move Me," she tugs zealously at a lyrical trope, giving it new life and meaning.

For Simpson's first album since his 2014 breakthrough, the inventive country singer crafts a highly personal song cycle about order and insubordination.

Is Vinyl's latest fictionalized New York music character a tribute to Jobriath, the post-Bowie 'space clown' who was rock's first openly homosexual performer?

Lit by flashbulbs since he was 17, the latest solo song by the former member of One Direction reflects an uncertain and overwhelmed story that runs through so much millennial pop.

A break up song from the Houston songwriter's brilliant new album that describes those lost moments between saying goodbye and actually leaving.

The event, centered around an initiative to educate girls and young women, reflected a reality in which hip-hop's influence is acknowledged and women are central to the conversation.

The producer and guitarist presides over a graceful concept album in which some of country and Americana's biggest stars reflect on home.