Paste's 100 Best Indie Folk Albums of All Time

It’s difficult to disassociate Morton’s past from the product that details it. In fact, knowing his story actually helps frame the album’s seemingly dichotomous words and sounds. And it’s that combination that makes White Lighter so entrancing, serving as both warning and celebration of mortality.

On Dry Food’s eight heartbreaking observations, she teeters between aching insecurity and crushing tenderness, rarely allowing sunlight to peak through the clouds.

It’s an artistic success as a literary exercise, and as a wrestling fan it’s hugely gratifying to see a serious artist that I’ve enjoyed for decades take wrestling seriously.

Olsen shares graciously in her music, and if you are willing, Burn a Fire for No Witness will change your world. Or, actually, it will change how you see your world.

A Man Alive is an endearing listen and has all of the elements of a complete work—even pop-centric singles in “Astonished Man” and “Nobody Dies.”

There’s plenty to chew on with his latest, Dream River. And that’s just the lyrics, whose weightiness is given more heft by his controlled baritone.

Sheff has succeeded in capturing a specific time and place. It puts you in his world and lets you feel a time when things felt new, with all of the potential and promise that life held before it reared its ugly head. 

The songs on their gorgeously sadsack follow-up Here’s to Taking It Easy evoke lost days and lonely nights with keen observations and road-weary melodies.

Even with a few skipable tracks, though, Of Monsters and Men bring an Icelandic exoticism and captivating energy to U.S. audiences on My Head is an Animal.

Above all, Andrew Bird is a highly skilled musician capable of crafting an album full of delightful little moments that make the album worth a fair listen, and more.

On Daze, Vile’s amorphous, ambient drones continue to solidify into sharp shapes with defined edges. While he was always a contemplative songwriter, Vile’s lyrics are now more ponderous and worldly rather than navel-gazing. 

Honeybear thrives on the knife’s edge of that enigmatic split personality, as he attempts to reconcile the love-swept optimist with the world-weary wise-ass.

Veckatimest sounds like the final product of a meticulous and exacting evolutionary process—one that has added depth and color to their swooning chamber pop arrangements, crispness to their intricate rhythms and intensity to their careful performances.