Chuck Roth’s “Texture Songs” is a highly accomplished album that expertly blends experimental guitar playing that Derek Bailey would be proud of with lyrics and singing that feel intrinsic and organic to the sound, adding a pulse, a beating heart. It’s an impressive balance, sounding both effortless and exciting.

Brìghde Chaimbeul’s first Tiny Desk Concert for NPR has already clocked over 340k views. Shahzad Ismaily joins her on synths, which lend the performance a stronger experimental feel. The set has tracks from “Sunwise” and “Carry Them with Us”. We look back at her time on KLOF since 2016, starting with the Radio 2 Young Folk Award.

For our latest “Off the Shelf” feature, Good Habits’ Bonnie Schwarz and Pete Shaw, whose new album “Better for Now” is a KLOF Mag Featured Album of the Month, choose ten objects from home. They include a stable door, a Mozart Mouse and a Beethoven Bear…there’s also a healthy discussion on whether art needs to have a story in order for it to make a connection.

With “Everything in Readiness”, Shovel Dance Collective have combined vision and virtuosity, intuitive gristle and scholastic rigour to create the best folk album of the year. This is folk music in its most potent form. By allowing itself to be hybridised and mongrelised by other influences, they are getting closer to what’s most vital and true about the form.

Dublin-based songwriter and poet Christian Wethered has released “The First Thing”, the opening track from his new album “From The Balustrade”, due in 2027 via LVP Records. His poetry takes centre stage, with dreamlike verses left open to interpretation. A playful, quirky arrangement flows through the lyrics, featuring, among others, Caimin Gilmore, one of Ireland’s finest double bassists. It feels like a big leap forward.

Declan O’Rourke talks about “Oceanic”, his eighth studio album, recorded in Sydney with Jim Moginie of Midnight Oil. Give an artist a palette of colours, he says, and “you can’t expect them to stick with yellow or red.” He also talks about finding his old classical guitar teacher after about ten years.

Spitzer Space Telescope shares the sea shanty single “Bound For Calais-O” a day before the Broadside Hacks Roster Tour begins in Lewes. Dan MacDonald calls sea shanties “a well of inspiration”, and this is the jolly “foc’sle” variety, with Mareva Lindo singing harmonies. It channels The Clancy Brothers’ gorgeous vibe, minus the Aran sweater.

Darren Hayman completed “I’m Your Team” in 2022, and it sat on the shelf for four years. Built on constraint, with a DX7 synth at its centre, it sees him at his most undiluted and emotionally stark, delivering some of the best songs of his career.