8 Great alt-country albums from summer 2025
We’ve all heard it at one time or another, the old refrain from even the most voracious of music fans out there: “Anything but country.” And listen, I get it. Like any genre, country music is one with its fair share of trite, spurious, unbearable rubbish. The greater issue, of course, is this is often the only sort of country music the average music listener will hear. You know the kind. It usually comes from handsome, sharp-jawed white guys named Caleb or Luke or Riley for whom the attendant blue jeans, cowboy hat and barely-buttoned western shirt are merely accoutrements to a painfully rehearsed style largely devoid of substance of any kind.
Thankfully, that is starting to change. If you have been paying attention to the indie-rock scene of the last few years, you know that alt-country has been having a bit of a moment. Five or 10 years ago it might have been slim pickings putting together a list like this, and ever more difficult convincing the average listener to dive into a genre with such complicated connotations. Now, however, with the help of rising stars like MJ Lenderman, Waxahatchee, and Wednesday, the genre, and its long, essential history, is being understood in a new light. For all the everyman pretense of pop-country, it’s artists like these, with their jagged, weathered vignettes and ramshackle artistry, that seem to be speaking to a moment when airbrushed vanity runs so rampant.
Like any genre, of course, the edges of the alt-country sound are often blurry and subjective. So, before I embark on what is the first in a long-running series on the best of what the genre has to offer, I want to first pay homage to what I see as the patron saints of alt-country. First, there’s the very namesake of this column, Lucinda Williams, whose 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road remains a high point for the genre and deep inspiration for all involved. Similarly, bands like Drive-By Truckers, Uncle Tupelo, and Silver Jews, as well as solo artists like Jason Molina, Townes Van Zandt, and Steve Earle stand as totems for those looking to capture the spirit and vitality inherent in alt-country.
With that in mind, let’s dive into some of the best alt-country of the moment, a treasure-trove of gritty, raw, twangy brilliance.
Tyler Childers – Snipe Hunter
I wanted to start with this, perhaps the most popular release on my list, for a few reasons. With a dozen nine-digit streaming hits and a handful of arena tours under his belt, Tyler Childers is a bona fide country music star. I mean, he’s no Jelly Roll, but he has very much got the juice. And what I love most about his latest album, Snipe Hunter, is how much it seemed to anger some of his longtime fans, who saw his move away from more muted Americana signifiers as heard on albums like 2023’s Rustin’ in the Rain and toward something far more jagged and unruly. Much of Snipe Hunter finds Childers more than a little fed up, snarling his way through songs about deadbeats and adding yet another name to his “Bitin’ List.” With help of famed producer Rick Rubin, Childers managed to wonderfully muss-up his established sound, highlighting the kind of rollicking bar-room charm that defines the best of alt-country. Childers can still write a crooning love song, like the big-hearted, intergenerational “Oneida,” but everything here feels tinged with a lovely devil-may-care attitude.
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Greg Freeman – Burnover
Freeman, unlike the more big-tent friendly Childers, represents the growing underground of alt-country. It’s something I am going to touch on quite a bit throughout this column, but so much of great genre music is born out of very specific scenes. There’s nothing quite like the beauty of discovering not just one artist, but a whole cluster of like-minded creatives holing up in some wonderfully out-of-the-way enclave. As it turns out, Burlington, Vermont is quickly becoming just such a locale, the small college town churning out a handful of exciting alt-rock voices. This group is highlighted by Greg Freeman, whose sophomore record Burnover captures the best of what alt-country has to offer. The immediate point of comparison for Freeman is Jason Molina (Songs: Ohia, Magnolia Electric Company), his coyote howl of a voice the kind that favors passion over technical prowess. It is, admittedly, also going to be the thing that either puts you all the way in on Freeman or keeps you at arm’s length. But beyond the vocals, Freeman and his band (which includes fellow Burlington alt-country songwriters Lily Seabird and Dari Bay) are producing some of the best Crazy Horse-level deep-fried country rock out there, wonderfully flirting with chaos while remaining as tight as can be.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
S.G. Goodman – Planting By The Signs
Many of the best alt-country artists find a way to blend shit-kicking bravado with a true poet soul and perhaps no one on this list better exemplifies this than Kentucky singer/songwriter S.G. Goodman. Goodman’s latest, Planting By The Signs, marks her third record and once again captures the unflinching transcendence and bitter heartache of the workaday struggle. “The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass every day,” sings Goodman on “Fire Sign,” a wonderful encapsulation of her worldview, one where Paris, Tennessee means much more than its European cousin. It’s not hard to see the legacy of a writer like southern gothic luminary Flannery O’Connor in Goodman’s work, a comparison which only seems lofty before you dive into her already impressive discography. Take a song like “Michael Told Me,” which uses repetition as a sort of hymnal mantra, a prayer for a “true friend” whose slow drift has abruptly spun out in a deadly car crash. It’s a song that’s a little angry, a little cosmic, and deeply sad, a beautiful send-off for a friend who always told Goodman they could handle whatever life, or death, might throw their way.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band – New Threats From The Soul
I have a playlist deep in my ever-growing catalog where I put all my favorite songs that run over seven minutes, titled “Longbois.” This is a playlist for your jams, your epics, your musical odysseys. There might come a time, in the very near future, where almost every song from Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band’s new album makes its way to the playlist. After all, of the seven songs on New Threats From The Soul, exactly five meet my invented threshold for what constitutes a “longboi.” It all starts with the title track, a meandering journey to the partly-sunny heart of the soul, a song which manages to, among other things, reference A Tribe Called Quest, Betty Rubble, and the tragedy of a Heisman hopeful, all injected with Davis’ lackadaisical everyman charm. “I will never be anything other than a caged bird swinging from a chain swing, whistlin’ for my payseed, pecking on a W9,” sings Davis in a wonderfully irreverent summation of the life of a touring musician. From there the record runs through a collection that brings to mind similar stream-of-consciousness poets like Bill Callahan and David Berman, all while being distinct, peculiar and wholly singular. I have heard tales, and hope to soon see in person, how wonderfully this is rendered as a live show, but it isn’t hard to imagine Davis and his Roadhouse Band camaraderie coming through live as easily as it does on this record.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Sally Anne Morgan – Second Circle the Horizon
This may sound counterintuitive, but the great thing about genre is how little you have to follow any of its rules. I’ve talked a lot about the great humanist storytellers of the genre, so why not embrace an artist for whom words are of no concern whatsoever. Sally Anne Morgan’s Second Circle the Horizon is a wholly instrumental album steeped in the traditions of Appalachian Folk, her meditative style implements everything from fiddle and banjo to synthesizer and an obscure string instrument, and Dononvan namesake, the hurdy-gurdy. Perhaps the album’s most arresting cut, “I Saw a Heron,” is a wonderfully circular interplay of fiddle and piano, a kind of Americana exploration that somehow also belongs in a film by Hayao Miyazaki. Morgan, based in Alexander, N.C., is clearly a student of history, witnessing how she blends her musical heritage with her own clear perspective is, in the truest sense, what alt-country is really all about.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Dean Johnson – I Hope We Can Still Be Friends
Of course, an incredible vocalist ain’t half bad either, and while it’s not the only thing to recommend Dean Johnson, it is the first thing that will bowl you over about his new record I Hope We Can Still Be Friends. Johnson is a true country crooner, a kind of sunny, West Coast Willie Nelson. I Hope We Can Still Be Friends is just Johnson second album as a solo act after spending decades as a musician for hire in the Pacific Northwest but serves as wonderful collection of downbeat country ditties, tumbling tumbleweeds on their way to nowhere in particular in search of nothing but a porch swing and a cold, hard beverage.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Willi Carlisle – Winged Victory
Old-timey charm has always been a part of country music, but sometimes that can be suspiciously pre-packaged. Nothing but homage, like a filtered instagram post of a tradwife churning butter. On the surface, Will Carlisle—Kansas bred, big as cottonwood tree, rocking suspenders and cowboy hat—might appear just that, but this is an artist intent on both embracing and undermining classic country traditions. Armed with the garrulous swagger of a smalltown preacher who moonlights as an auctioneer and a voice somewhere between a train whistle and a hound dog, Carlisle comes from a polka tradition and blends both originals and traditional covers to create an oeuvre all his own. Take, for example, “Big Butt Billy,” perhaps the only song ever sung to deify the derriere of a non-binary server at a local hole-in-the-wall. “Well good God almighty, hail Satan, I’ve never seen a finеr they/them than Big Butt Billy,” sings Carlisle with not a hint of sarcasm. Then there’s a song like “Beeswing,” with none of the humor but all the heart, an ode to a former lover too delicate and wayward for the world in which she was born, a rambling itch never to be scratched.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
I Will Swim to You: A Tribute to Jason Molina
I’ve hinted at the importance of musical lineage throughout this column, something I feel is especially important within alt-country. This last record, I Will Swim to You, is a direct testament to that idea. Jason Molina is a name I’ve already evoked, an important one in the history of alt-country music. Sadly, his is not the only name in the pantheon to be spoken in past tense. Though Molina died at age 39 back in 2013, his legacy has surely lived on in the wave of current artists that continuously cite him as an essential inspiration. Some of them, of course, are included in this recent collection of covers, including Friendship (“Hard to Love a Man”), Sadurn (“The Old Black Hen”), MJ Lenderman (“Just Be Simple”), and Trace Mountains (“The Dark Don’t Hide It”). While each put their own spin on his aching tales of disconnection and loss, the soul of these songs remain a shining light for those who continued to be inspired by Molina’s songwriting. It’s easy to imagine many of these artists, and the others on the record, inspiring further generations to embrace the malleable genre, continuing the legacy into infinity.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
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