I started putting together a playlist under this title at least six months ago but stalled when I failed to gather a suitable amount of songs for it. Well, it's been quietly mocking me since, so I finally decided to tackle it once and for all. The basic criteria was nebulous to begin with, but here are some key words that still largely fit the end result: haunting, organic, female vocals, largely acoustic instrumentation, strong folk/country leanings, a certain quietly passionate atmosphere. Even if the "concept" is unclear to everyone but me, I think I ended up with a collection of songs that hangs together really well and consistently evokes the ambiguous "mood" I was after. At any rate, I've listened to it at least half a dozen times now and have yet to get sick of it, so that must count for something.

If you want the music without any additional preamble, scroll to the bottom of this post for a Spotify playlist (bar one frustratingly unavailable song). Or you can follow along with my commentary on each track (which I've tried to keep as brief as possible) and click the titles to listen on Youtube. Whichever experience you choose, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

1. Sara Watkins - Take Up Your Spade

Sun is up. A new day is before you. Sun is up. Wake your sleepy soul.

This may seem like a low-key beginning, but among songs that dwell so much in darkness, it's essential to balance things out with a little light. Sara Watkins' angelic yet earthy vocals rise above the subdued twang of acoustic instrumentation to deliver the song's simple, life-affirming message. Once she is joined by a rowdy sea of contributing voices - including her brother, Sean, and friend, Fiona Apple - it reaches a point of gentle transcendence.

2. Over the Rhine - The Seahorse

Up above the small town, pulling moonlight down and wearing it skin-tight.

(The studio version of this song is not on Youtube, so a live performance will have to do.) For years, this has been one of my very favorite songs. There's something magical in its simplicity. The relentless acoustic guitar, sinuous melodies, and Karin Bergquist's impassioned croon culminate in what amounts to the musical equivalent of an incantation. With every repetition of her insistent battle cry - "Don't you want to see what you're missing?" - we're drawn further and further into her web.

3. She & Him - This Is Not a Test

For those of you who thought you'd be forgotten, the friends you've made will try their best to make it so.

Zooey Deschanel's voice is polarizing for many people, but I've always been fond of its vintage quirkiness, affected or not. Volume One has an effortless, timeless purity to it that she and M. Ward have yet to outmatch, and this is one of its most gripping songs, an essentially perfect slice of powerful, poppy alt-country. Deschanel's sunny, lovable harmonies are only rivaled by her adorable (and accurate!) impersonation of a trumpet solo in lieu of the real thing.

4. Alela Diane - The Rifle

Papa, get the rifle from its place above the french doors. They're coming from the woods.

I find most of Alela Diane's music to be very dull, which is a shame because she's got such a wonderfully rich, smoky, and evocative voice. However, this song packs an excellent little Southern Gothic tale about violence, family, and death into just under three minutes, its rustic lyrics complemented by sparse acoustic strumming and hollow, stripped down production. The overall effect is so cinematic you can practically see the scenes unfolding before your eyes.

5. Cold Specks - Winter Solstice

Sons and daughters, may you kill what my blind heart could not.

This song also takes a page from the Southern Gothic handbook, mixing it up with a little New Orleans soul for good measure. It opens calmly, following a meandering piano melody, but soon expands into a swell of bass drum, electric guitar, and men's choir to support Al Spx's blues-and-gospel-infused outpouring of emotion. The song's controlled yet bracing energy is perfectly encapsulated in the title of the album from which it comes: I Predict a Graceful Expulsion.

6. Melanie - Lovin' Baby Girl

I had a dream and saw a place I'd never seen.

(Unfortunately, this song isn't available on Spotify; if you're following along with the playlist, click over to Youtube for this one instead.) Melanie Safka is probably one of the more underrated members of the late '60s/early '70s singer-songwriter movement. She has a voice that's equal parts gravelly and sweet, and her songs transcend folk by incorporating elements of psychedelia and gospel. The psychedelic influence is strong in this one, as the more straightforward verses are juxtaposed against moody musical detours, unearthly harmonies, and funky bursts of keyboard.

7. Kathleen Edwards - Westby

If you weren't so old, I'd tell my friends, but I don't think your wife would like my friends.

Kathleen Edwards is one of the best discoveries I made last year. She's a ridiculously consistent songwriter who will have you alternately crying and raging alongside her. This song is definitely more of a rager, a rousing, volatile country kiss-off from a young woman to her married older lover that's full of laugh-out-loud quips. "If you weren't so old, I would probably keep you," she sneers before swiping her paramour's gold watch while he sleeps off a hangover in a seedy motel.

8. Diane Cluck - Bones and Born Again

You fade from me like you know I'm dying. You fade from me like I'm already gone.

This is the best kind of slow-burner. Diane Cluck has a voice so immediately personable and affecting that she could sing just about anything and sell every word of it down to the last syllable. The heart-in-throat wobble in her clear, light voice as she draws out her notes gives me goosebumps every time and turns this relatively simple acoustic ballad into an entrancing emotional journey, even as the cryptic lyrics remain maddeningly impossible to crack.

9. Nina Nastasia - In the Graveyard

I'm still lonely, and I'm not ready. You scared me when you hid behind the trees.

(The Youtube link is a fan-made video that contains some suicidal imagery and also ends with two minutes of silence, for some reason.) This was an unexpected inclusion, but it fits nicely, as Nina Nastasia is another master of making the most out of very little. There are only about six lines total repeated throughout the song, but Nastasia's grief-stricken wail, accompanied by a sobbing violin melody, leaves you hanging on to every word like it's entirely new, making it a gripping experience from beginning to end.

10. Hurray for the Riff Raff - The Body Electric

Tell me, what's a man with a rifle in his hand going do for a world that's all gone mad?

Despite the depravity of the lyrics, the atmosphere of this song is incredibly soothing, crafted from the rich interplay between acoustic guitar, violin, and Alynda Lee Segarra's effortlessly throaty singing voice. By the end, like a lullaby, it manages to soothe you into a state of comfortable calm. But, unlike a lullaby, things take a chilling turn when you finally realize that Segarra has been singing about cold-blooded murder, both figuratively and literally, the entire time.

11. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Rise Up with Fists!!

Are you really that pure, sir? Thought I saw you in Vegas. It was not pretty, but she was.

This is one of Jenny Lewis' flagship songs for a reason: it perfectly encapsulates the wittily acerbic lyrics and twangy folk-pop sound she'd been cultivating since the early days of Rilo Kiley. From the first note, Lewis delivers a career-best vocal performance, bolstered by the Watson Twins' soulful harmonies. Their vocal interplay highlights the humor in the lyrics, as when the above line is followed by the cheeky parenthetical insertion, "not your wife," three words that entirely change the narrative.

12. Y La Bamba - Juniper

My temple has been compromised. I was meant to rise six feet above my bed.

Unfortunately, I've found it hard to get into anything else I've heard from Y La Bamba because it fails to live up to the hypnotic vitality of this song. The harmonies here are just so, so impeccable, the melodies air-tight, culminating in a mesmerizing, heartfelt swirl of impossibly beautiful sounds. Chief among them is Luz Elena Mendoza's voice and its call-and-response relationship to the hushed male accompaniment. Together, they create a thrilling sense of urgency.

13. Jessica Pratt - Hollywood

All covered in marigolds, you go so low. Through the window, oh, you go.

Jessica Pratt has that sort of girlish, warbling vocal style I find instantly charming. Here, it's particularly well-suited to the somber, low-key atmosphere, a contrast between light and darkness that lends eeriness to the lyrics, which in their abstraction serve as a mysterious, unsettling parable. The timelessness of Pratt's melodies also displaces the song in time, so that it could just as easily be some forgotten gem from Laurel Canyon in the 1960s as a product of twenty-first century urbanism.

14. Linda Perhacs - Chimacum Rain

It kind of gets inside you, the silences, I mean. They kind of wrap around you and loosen everything.

I wouldn't be surprised if Linda Perhacs influenced nearly every woman represented here in one way or another, so it only makes sense to include her. Besides, this song, which is the first of hers I heard and remains my favorite, is a perfect fit. Its pretty, soothing folkiness abruptly gives way to a darkly discordant cascade of harmonies two minutes in. In fact, you could almost say it's like gently falling rain transforming suddenly into a crashing thunderstorm.

15. Mitski - Texas Reznikoff

I've been anywhere, and it's not what I want. I want to be still with you.

Mitski filters her twangy influences through a grungy, lo-fi sensibility and comes out all the better for it. Her sensitive delivery and delicate guitar-playing in the song's opening moments builds suddenly and forcefully into a distorted, cacophonous whirlwind of noise. Above it all, she yowls her lovelorn lyrics like a woman barely hanging on to her final scraps of dignity before saying "fuck it all" and letting her insecurities wave like a tattered yet cautiously optimistic flag.

16. Angel Olsen - Hi-Five

We'll keep our hands, our legs, even our lips apart, but I'm giving you my heart.

Like Mitski, Angel Olsen veers on the louder, messier side of alt-country, injecting it with a good dose of self-deprecating humor. Accompanied by jagged, blown-out bursts of electric guitar, Olsen coyly yodels her way through melodramatic lines ("I feel so lonesome I could cry"). At the same time, she's earnest in her quest for companionship: "Are you lonely, too?" she asks plaintively in the chorus, a question as direct as eye contact, before responding enthusiastically, "Hi-five! So am I!" 

17. The Be Good Tanyas - Broken Telephone

Higher and higher I am taken by what you've given to me.

The drunken, marble-mouthed quality of the Be Good Tanyas' vocal harmonies can be an acquired taste. It's much harder, though, to deny the emotional potency of this song, which has melodies that are heartbreaking all on their own, with or without the regretful lyrics. The chorus arrives with a rush of nostalgia, like you've already heard it so many times it's written across your heart. When it's over, you realize you've experienced one of those rare feats of absolutely universal songwriting.

18. Jolie Holland - Damn Shame

I try to go to sleep in my haunted little room. The shadows are churning in the passage of the moon.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that Jolie Holland was once a member of the Be Good Tanyas; they both share a penchant for subtly devastating melodies and exaggeratedly warbly vocals. I find most of Holland's material too meandering, but this song is something special. A spare piano ballad, it's entirely dependent on her calculatedly sloppy delivery, which lends extraordinary weariness to the simple refrain, "Oh, it's nothing but a goddamn shame."

19. First Aid Kit - Emmylou

It's funny to think that some of the purest Americana in recent years comes from a couple of Swedes, yet sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg may have crafted the de facto tribute to classic country. From the honey-drenched melodies to the gently brushed drums and expansive pedal steel to the massive, name-dropping chorus, it's hard to imagine a song more perfectly crafted. When the sisters implore, "Sing, little darling, sing with me," it's hard to refuse the offer.

20. Lucinda Williams - Greenville


Speaking of Emmylou Harris... I really need to expand my knowledge of her solo material because she's contributed backing vocals to at least half a dozen of my favorite songs. This is one of them, and her effortlessly weighty croon is the perfect counterpart to Lucinda Williams' gritty, atonal wail. In all honesty, this is a fairly routine country ballad, right down to the allusions to drinking and violence, but the marvel of the two women's harmonies puts it a notch above the rest.

21. Patty Griffin - Mary


Here's another stunning Emmylou Harris feature, not to mention the spark that set off this entire idea in the first place. Over an ethereal haze of percussion, Patty Griffin tackles well-worn biblical themes from a refreshingly - and devastatingly - female perspective: "While the angels are singing His praises in a blaze of glory, Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place." This explosive chorus is given more power the second time around: alone, Griffin's voice is a force to be reckoned with; accompanied by Harris, it's practically invincible.