10 New and Upcoming Country and Americana Artists You Need to Know September 2024

It's time for our monthly round up of the 10 Country and Americana Artists You Need to Know.

This month we’ve got a duo from Whitesburg, KY, signed to Tyler Childers’ Hickman Holler label who mash up Appalachian traditional, jazz, avant-garde, indie and psychedelic country rock and come up with something truly unlike anything else, a bona fide singing cowgirl from North Texas and a singer from Orange County, FL, who has captured our hearts with a sound she intriguingly describes as “Bootgazey."

All this and more as we dive into another of Holler's monthly roundups of our latest loves; a who's who of the most exciting prospects to begin leaving their mark on the country and Americana landscape.

Here's Holler's 10 New and Upcoming Country and Americana Artists You Need to Know for September:

Fresh from opening up for Lord Huron and Medium Build, and currently supporting Morgan Wade before she goes back out on the road with Odie Leigh, Clover County is the nom de plume of A.G. Schiano, whose debut single ‘Outlaw,’ with its icy cool, acerbic lyrics and moony insouciance, was fixed to the top of our Best Indie Country Songs playlist when it was released at the tail end of 2023.

She followed ‘Outlaw’ up with the deliciously dreamy ‘Glass & Gold,’ with its ethereal guitar swells and Cocteau Twins references in the lyrics hinting at a definite shoegaze influence, and ‘Black Leather Daydream’ which added a dash of Angelo Badalamenti into the mix of slacker pop and countrified indie folk.

“I’ve coined the term ‘Bootgazey’ as a cute little stamp to describe my sound,” she explains. “I’m influenced by so many different genres from indie rock to folk and classic country, all the way to dream pop.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m trying to call myself ‘shoegaze’ in the traditional sense that I’m loaded up with a bunch of cool pedals,” she says, “but more in the sense that I’m usually staring down at my own boots, trying not to trip over them and also thinking about how cute they look on stage (psst… Frye, this is your chance to sponsor a hardworking, darling, up and comer!).”

“’Black Leather Daydream’ is a song for the lovers who fight,” she tells us. “For those who sacrifice themselves for what feels like love, the forgivers, the second chance givers, those who turn a blind eye to mistreatment because they see the reason behind it all and believe they could be the one to heal the person in front of them.”

“I was inspired by my own experience as a young woman navigating a new relationship with a tortured artist from the west coast,” she explained. “Classic. I changed myself so much to feel more compatible and more comfortable only to start reflecting back the parts of this person who didn’t even like them self.”

“The song came from a place of helplessness, but I feel empowered singing it today as it represents so much growth in love and life.”

Growing up amidst the orange groves and sunny climes of the 'Theme Park Capital of the World', Orange County, Florida, Clover County began songwriting at the age of 13, teaching herself to play from her dad’s collection of 1980’s songbooks. She drew inspiration from documentaries and interviews with influential women in music, such as Stevie Nicks, Carole King, Taylor Swift, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dolly Parton.

“Thanks to my dad I heard a lot of classic and glam rock,” she says. “Stevie Nicks, Motley Crue and Tom Petty. And thanks to my mama I heard lots of Carole King and Sugarland, Shania Twain. My dad bought me my first CD - Taylor Swift’s debut - before I’d even learned to read. Both of my parents loved to watch music documentaries and that’s where I began to romanticize a life of creating music and getting out on the road.”

The name “Clover County”is a tribute to all the places she's called home. After moving from Orlando to Denver, Atlanta to Birmingham, to Athens, Clover grew tired of seeking a sense of home and relying on the next city to be the “lucky one” where things would fall into place.

“I spent the last few years living in Athens while attending the University of Georgia and I will always attribute so much of my musical journey to this city,” she says of performing weekly in Athens, building her audience the old-fashioned way​. “The music scene in Athens is a force to be reckoned with and I still dream of headlining the Georgia Theatre one day. As much as I love my home state it’s always gonna be a Go Dawgs from me!”

“Orange County is an extremely diverse place so I was lucky enough to engage with a lot of different cultures in school and in my community early on,” she adds. “If the Sunshine State taught me anything it’s that the sun and salt water can heal almost anything, inside and out.

She carries that spirit of a greater healing power over into her peculiarly modern love songs, which feel like perfectly baked bite sized anthems for the more anxious among us to keep close to our hearts for comfort as the world falls apart around us.

Clover County’s latest single ‘Limbo’ is out now on Under Cover Lover Records via Thirty Tigers.

Listen If You Like: Waxahatchee, Haley Heynderickx, Bella White

“Dark country fried with some soul, riding away on a chromed out motorcycle,” is how Kassi Ashton hilariously describes her sound.

“I grew up listening to every empowered female that had struggle and a story in her voice,” she explains about her early influences. “My mother and sister both sang, so the house was never quiet. Classic country came first, but was quickly followed by Aretha, Janis, Stevie, Cher, Amy etc. Anything with heart and soul.”

Born in California, Missouri, a “One stop light, no Wal-Mart” town of 4,000 people, Kassi’s childhood was one filled with dichotomies. As detailed in her origin story anthem ‘Son of a Gun,’ Kassi’s parents broke up before she was even old enough to remember them together and she split her time between the two.

“I could write a dissertation on how it influenced me, but to put it short, it obviously made me who I am today,” she says. “My dad lived in the middle of nowhere on a farm and my mom lived in town. I lived two separate lives because of their opposing styles of raising children and where they themselves were born. Dad, his California, Missouri roots, and his side of upbringing there, made me somewhat of a hillbilly myself. I love the middle of nowhere. I love slow schedules and home-grown food. I love to hunt, camp, ride motorcycles on back highways where I only pass farm trucks and Amish buggies. I learned how to talk to strangers and still crave middle of the woods privacy. At the end of all of this, I want to own a farm, fill it with gardens and animals and motorcycles.”

“Mom's projected ambition gave me the want and need to get out of such a place,” she says of the household where she heard Reba McEntire, Stevie Nicks, Aretha Franklin, Tammy Wynette, and Loretta Lynn, before she discovered equally formative powerhouse singers like Amy Winehouse and Adele herself. “To see, experience and be so much more than what's possible in a town that small.”

“Because my mom had a life filled with struggle, she played women who’d had a life filled with struggle,” Ashton says. “They had some life in their voice. Maybe they’d smoked too many cigarettes, or stayed out too late, or screamed too loud night-after-night. The only vulnerability allowed in my household was born from overcoming struggle and getting revenge.”

“I love fashion, music, and cultures different than my own because of her," she adds about her mom. “That side made me dream bigger, go further. Ballet, beauty pageants, theatre. I've always wanted to be just as much one side as I am the other. I couldn't have felt that so deeply if I hadn't been born in California, Missouri. I love being from a town that small, but I love just as much that I learned how to leave.”

A natural-born performer, at five years old she was singing and dancing in front of an ice cream bucket for tips at the private airport where her mother worked.

“I was constantly escaping in my brain, making art, writing, singing, dancing, making clothes all day long, every hour of the day,” she says. “They say, ‘Idle hands are the devil's playground,’ and to make things all the time keeps my brain straight.”

With the encouragement of her grandma Juanita, Kassi moved to Nashville enrolling in Belmont University to study Commercial Voice with a minor in Music Business. “I arrived in square-toed cowboy boots - shit-kickers - and a ball cap and everyone around me had recorded in a studio before or had a CD. I was like, ‘What’s an EP?’ l knew nothing!”

Whatever she didn’t know she picked up quickly and her hotly anticipated debut album, Made From The Dirt, is a masterclass in powerhouse country that will have you rolling the sunroof back and finding any excuse to drive around town just so you can blast it.

Switching seamlessly between a swaggering, husky voiced honky tonk badass and an imperious Las Vegas diva, whether it’s stadium sized big weepers like ‘The Straw,’ co-written with Lori Mckenna and Luke Laird, or the playful country pop of ‘Called Crazy’ and the title track, Made from the Dirt arrives like an instant country classic. It’s probably the closest thing we’ll get to a country album by Adele until Adele actually makes one.

That farm full of motorcycles might have to wait a little longer.

Made from the Dirt by Kassi Ashton is released on 20 September on MCA Nashville/Interscope

Listen If You Like: Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, Carly Pearce

Tucked away on the soundtrack to Twisters: The Movie was a tiny, perfectly imperfect gem of a country folk song that sounded strangely out of place amongst all the big hitters surrounding it. ‘Wall of Death,’ performed by Wilderado, James McAlister and Ken Pomeroy, was a scratchy old timey rendition of the Richard and Linda Thompson original that closed out their 1982 album Shoot Out The Lights.

It was Ken Pomeroy’s vocals taking on the second verse that seemed to lift the song up and take it somewhere beyond an ordinary cover version of a folk classic though. Her voice is warm and approachable, but oddly otherworldly; able to take a song you’ve listened to countless times before and make it sound like you’re hearing it for the first time. Gorgeous and heavy with sadness but with a quiet depth and strength.

Born and raised outside of Oklahoma City, Pomeroy has long captivated audiences through her unaffected storytelling at a young age, cutting her teeth on the road at age 14 and playing shows at her dad’s hot-rod garage turned listening room in OKC, before releasing her full-length debut, Christmas Lights in April, in 2021.

A skilled guitarist and versatile session musician, she has lent her musical ability to projects by artists such as Wilderado, Kyle Nix of the Turnpike Troubadours, and J.R. Carroll. Influenced by John Denver, Buck Meek, Jake Xerxes Fussell, and Gillian Welch, Ken is inspired by the voices of a preceding generation, and her two latest singles, ‘Pareidolia’ and ‘Cicadas’ showcase her unique sound, anchored in her Native American heritage.

‘Cicadas’ is out now on Rounder Records

Listen If You Like: Gillian Welch, Jensen McRae, Adrienne Lenker

“Been a hot mess, been a bad look / Been a worn out book that you’ve read before,” Sophie Gault, formerly the singer in Sophie & The Broken Things, sings on the appropriately titled ‘Fixin’ Things’ as she desperately tries to atone for her past mistakes. “Been an old dress, zipper got stuck / Worth about 5 bucks at the thrift store.”

From the sloppy, sleazy country rock of ‘Fixin’ Things’ and ‘Poet in a Buick’ to the Banglesy power pop of ‘Christmas in the Psych Ward’ and the album’s gentler moments like ‘Every Little Bit’ and ‘Over & Out,’ Sophie Gault’s forthcoming album, Baltic Street Hotel, is a joyfully eclectic mix of alt-country and breezy Tom Petty pop.

Growing up on the blues of Skip James, Memphis Minnie, Muddy Waters and Mississippi John Hurt, Gault originally hails from the DC area, but she found her people in the “music that fell between the cracks of country, blues, rock and folk,” listening to artists like Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Bonnie Raitt, Gram Parsons and The Rolling Stones, and moved to Nashville back in 2014

“These are all people who played country music, but followed their own path and weren’t strictly any one thing,” explains Gault. “I love honesty and authenticity. I’m inspired by blues musicians like Robert Johnson just as much as by bands like Green Day or Lucinda Williams. I would hope that the way I sound reflects that.”

Produced by Grammy Award-winning producer and singer-songwriter Ray Kennedy, known for his own country hits in the early ‘90s and his collaborative work with Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, and Patty Griffin, Baltic Street Hotel is an exploration of Gault’s experience with bipolar disorder, which sees the Nashville singer, songwriter, and guitarist seeking a path to forgiveness in its many forms.

Often seen out on the road as a touring guitarist for Margo Cilker and Gabe Lee, the album – which features a duet with frequent collaborator Lee and backing vocals from fellow Nashville artists Lilly Hiatt and Jon Latham - follows up Gault’s 2022 album Delusions Of Grandeur, which she released under the Sophie & the Broken Things moniker.

It’s ‘Lately,’ the gorgeously understated duet between Gault and Gabe Lee, that takes centre stage on the album. Playing out like a casual catch-up between two old friends who might have lost touch but don’t seem to be able to let each other go, it’s one of those country duets you’ll want to dust off whenever you need a little reminder of just how sweet life can be. Even at its bitterest.

Baltic Street Hotel is out on 20th September on Petaluma Records.

Listen If You Like: Lucinda Williams, Sheryl Crow, Roseanne Cash

Wayne Graham have been around long enough now to be a band that you might already know, but just in case you don't, we’re putting it out there again.

For the already initiated, their blend of Appalachian traditional, jazz, avant-garde, indie and psychedelic country rock, will have been well and truly loved over the course of nine albums that began way back in 2010 with Ripe Old Age.

The band - made up of brothers Kenny and Hayden Miles - is the product of Whitesburg, Kentucky, a small town with a population of 1,711 on the far eastern side of the state, almost in western Virginia, and part of a burgeoning scene of Kentuckians like S.G. Goodman, Tyler Childers (whose Hickman Holler label their latest album is released on), Cage The Elephant, Ian Noe and more, who are reflecting on and exploring what it means to come from where they do.

“Our music is the way it is because we’re from here,” Hayden says. “It’s very specifically Kentucky.”

“We grew up playing a lot of traditional tunes and gyms with family, but also listening to our parents’ 70’s and 80’s centric record collection,” the brothers explain. “Our dad was a country radio DJ for a while. We like instrumental music, we like heavy music, we like folk and R&B. Our music will sound like any of these or any combination of these.”

On their latest, ninth studio album, Bastion, Wayne Graham explore what happens when you no longer fit in with the tiny coal mining town in southeastern Kentucky you grew up in - the town where they learned to play music from their family, where they served as the rhythm section for their father’s small church and where they started making music together in a band called Wayne Graham. Feeling increasingly alienated from the culture and values of the place, a small town not unlike so many other small towns in America, the songs on Bastion tackle political tension within families and tough conversations around the kitchen table about the drag ban, racism in America, and gun violence, as well as broader themes of what it means to belong, what is home and finding common ground, the tension between identification and alienation, pride and shame, home and not-home.

“I feel very fortunate to be able to say we’re from here, and it’s inspiring to watch other people from this region find success,” says Kenny, who lives two hours away in Lexington, Kentucky. “At the same time it can be very isolating. It feels strange to play our hometown, because our music isn’t what people are looking for here. Sometimes Wayne Graham feels like a square peg in a round hole.”

Wayne Graham remains a space where the brothers can entertain any musical ides that crosses their minds, a space where no sound or whim is out of place.

Their songs use folk and country as a foundation for fearless explorations of jazz, punk, soul, noise, classic rock, and modern classical. If King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard ever made a cosmic country album it might sound something like Wayne Graham.

“Bastion was recorded over the course of year,” they explain. “Mostly constructing songs based on loops we built to use as a metronome. We moved our studio about two thirds of the way through so it was recorded and finished in two different spaces. I like that Bastion was a way of connecting the new space to the old one.”

“Things come up in these songs that we struggle to understand or maybe feel isolated about,” says Hayden. “Working on the song together allows us to be open with each other. It’s not like we go through every little thing we’re thinking and feeling, but it does force us to confront this stuff together.”

“Creating these songs can be difficult, and it can feel dangerous and scary to put them out into the world,” Kenny concurs. “But the real reason we do this is so we can hang out together. That feels more true than anything, else, because that’s the most valuable thing we could get out of this, at least from where I’m standing.”

Bastion is out now on Hickman Holler via Thirty Tigers

Listen If You Like: Dougie Poole, Sam Evian, Chris Cohen

Country music isn’t all that complicated. It’s just a matter of doing it until you get it right. Wax on, wax off. Once you get it, you’ve got it. Just two singles in and Tommy Acker is already making it look easy.

Born and raised in Tyler, Texas, Tommy Acker is an old soul with a big heart singing the kind of seemingly simple country songs that belie their emotional depth. With it’s breezy singalong feel and easily relatable lyrics, ‘How to Not,’ released in May, has already racked up well over a million plays and feels like the kind of song that’s only going to keep getting bigger, while his second single, ‘Thoughts I’ve Been Thinkin,’ is a stylish cut of brooding country pop that feels as fresh and exciting as it does reassuringly familiar.

“I grew up playing football and baseball and was always running around doing something,” Acker laughs. “I really fell in love with country music with guys like Brad Paisley and Cody Johnson being my two big inspirations, but I also love guys like Morgan Wallen and Riley Green. have been playing guitar since I was a senior in high school but really got into playing and writing about three years ago. Since then, I have written and recorded with some awesome people and plan to keep things rolling!”

Just don't forget to breathe, very important.

‘How to Not’ and ‘Thoughts I’ve Been Thinkin’ are out now.

Listen If You Like: Bailey Zimmerman, Tucker Wetmore, Vincent Mason

“My sound is a mix of the traditional country I grew up with - pedal steel, banjo, acoustic guitar - and the indie rock and alternative sound I love,” Zach John King says. “Fender Jaguar guitars, hooky guitar riffs, really tight drum sounds. Lyrically I write my story. Every song I have is an honest reflection of me or something that happened in my life. That lyrically honesty is something I’ll never compromise, and I feel like it sets itself apart from just another country song.”

Originally from Fayetteville, GA, a small town outside of Atlanta with a population of 18,000, Zach John King’s grandfather worked on the line at General Motors and his grandmother introduced him to country music on Saturday mornings at a very young age.

“I grew up with my grandma listening to Patsy Cline while she cooked on a radio she had in her cabinet,” he remembers. “Being from South Georgia, you’re only listening to country music everywhere you go. Then as I got to high school I started finding Kings of Leon, The Strokes, and other ‘indie’ bands. I feel like growing with such a wide variety of country and alternative shaped the kind of music I make.”

Since debuting his first single in October 2023, the singer-songwriter has garnered over 6 million career streams, quietly amassing over 3 million views on demos and worktapes on Tik Tok even before his first official release.

When he dropped his debut EP, Wannabe Cowboy, in May it was a faultless package of heartfelt country songs that collected together previous singles ‘The Way I See You,’ ‘Smoke On My Jacket,’ ‘Anything But What It Was’ and ‘Same Song, Different Dance,’ while his latest singles, ‘See It For Myself’ and ‘I’d Like To Think,’ are setting him up for a big year next year.

A fresh, youth conversant take on classic boyfriend country, if you’re thinking of taking a romantic late-night drive somewhere then you’ll want to make sure you’ve got some Zach John King lined up for when you park up.

‘See It For Myself’ is out now. Zach John King is on tour with Conner Smith in November.

Listen If You Like: Ashley Cooke, George Birge, Kameron Marlowe

“Some of the best cowboys are cowgirls,” as the old saying goes, and Jenna Paulette is the proof of that.

Originally from North Texas, “the land of cowboys and right on the Red River which was the cattle trail border into ‘Indian Territory’ back in the day”, working cowgirl and songstress Jenna Paulette has been hard at work on new music since signing with independent record label Leo33 at the beginning of this year.

Approaching her new project happily married and with a baby on the way, Paulette is fully embracing all aspects of her life that have shaped her, including heartbreaks and newfound love, in her recently released sophomore album HORSEBACK. Infused with the rugged individualism, free-spirited strength and down-home gentleness that comes with being a bona fide cowgirl who knows only too well the gritty realities of ranch life and wears her hat for more than just wild nights out on Broadway.

“Being wild has always gotten a bad rap, but I’ve always felt wild,” Paulette reflects on her recent single ‘Wild Is Her Favorite Color.’ “Not Fireball shots at 3 A.M. wild, but honeysuckle growing up an old fence post. Horse wide open in a pasture. Sunset on fire, wind in my hair kind of wild. The kind of wild that God smiles about because he’s the one that made the wild… Not people’s opinions, not my own opinions about myself, not the constraints of society, undomesticated but feminine. Ruled by her maker and not the things the world says will make her. Free to be whatever it is that truly makes me come alive. So yes, I’m wild. And I’m hoping that when I’m done with it, it won’t have such a bad rap.”

“My life has always been surrounded by history, cattle, cowboys, tradition and family,” Paulette says. “It lent itself to the motifs of the country genre, I got to live the life on our ranch and I live it now every day. I listened to old school country with my grandad in his pickup checking cows. Country was always playing in our house while we cooked. I couldn't help but be influenced by all of that, and it spills out in my lyrics and in my day-to-day life.”

Taking the sophisticated countrypolitan and understated stoicism of Carly Pearce’s 29: Written in Stone and mixing it up with the tough-as-nails twang of Miranda Lambert to create something that feels uniquely hers, HORSEBACK boasts songwriting credits for Lori McKenna, Liz Rose, Hillary Lindsey, Kelley Lovelace, Ashley Gorley, Dallas Davidson, Ashley McBryde, Matraca Berg, Lydia Vaughan and producer Will Bundy.

“Traditional, but for today's listener,’ Paulette says, describing her sound for the uninitiated. “Unashamedly western, but with a door cracked for those that didn't get to grow up like me.”

HORSEBACK is out now on Leo33

Listen If You Like: Miranda Lambert, Carly Pearce, Caylee Hammack

One of the truly loveliest sounding records released this year, Marley Hale’s debut By My Own Ways EP has had at least a couple of spins on the Holler stereo every day since it came out in July. The Brooklyn-based singer songwriter has blessed us with a truly captivating country classic.

Born in Austin but raised in Northern California, Hale took up guitar at age 10 and soon began writing songs of her own, eventually mining inspiration from the likes of Loretta Lynn and Gillian Welch, while listening to a mix of classic rock like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath through her dad and legendary songwriters like Sheryl Crow and Lucinda Williams from her mom.

“I spent a lot of time busking and going to open mics in San Francisco as a teenager, influenced by the city's rich history of folk and rock music,” she says. “At 18, I moved back to Texas and was reintroduced to country folk songwriting greats like Townes Van Zandt and Gillian Welch, and honky tonks like Sagebrush and the White Horse. By the time I landed in New York City, another hotspot of folk music history, I found myself leaning more and more into the country folk sound and it felt like home and tied together all the places I'd been.”

Her debut EP is a 5-song rollercoaster of a record that grapples with self-loathing and self-acceptance, from avoidance and shame in the moody opener ‘To Those at My Window’ to all-consuming longing in the woozy barroom waltz ‘Drunk On You’ and the stark honky tonk ballad ‘On Your Knees’ to acceptance and self-actualization in ‘Good Man,’ each song capturing a particular moment in the process of self-acceptance.

Marley Hale’s By My Own Ways EP is out now.

Listen If You Like: Esther Rose, Laura Cantrell, Tift Merritt

An artist, songwriter, and producer based out of Florida, Cory Hueston was previously the frontman of the indie/alternative-duo, The Blancos, but has since dropped his first name and shifted his attention to his very first solo project simply as Hueston

Blending lush orchestral backing tracks with trappy hip hop beats, a string of country infused singles in the last 12 months have driven the mysterious artist further into the spotlight.

Via his own label Young Hueston via Silver Wings Records, he shares his emotional storytelling, skilfully picked guitar and soul-stirring vocals as he unpacks his own professional and personal journeys overcoming depression and addictions and turning over a new chapter in life.

Dark and provocative, his uniquely contemporary take on country soul is best exemplified by his latest single, the powerfully evocative survival anthem ‘Still Alive & Kickin,’ written by Brandon Sammons and David Ray Stevens, with production by BSAMZ, which marks Hueston’s third release with UMG Nashville’s Silver Wings Records, following ‘Every Time Is The Last Time’ and ‘Living Fast.’

Hueston road tests his new direction at Bourbon & Beyond in Louisville, KY, on September 24 and Ocean City’s Country Calling Festival on October 4, while he continues to write and record.

‘Still Alive & Kickin’ is out now via Young Hueston, LLC distributed by Silver Wings Records

Listen If You Like: Sam Hunt, David Morris, Jelly Roll

For more of the monthly editions of Holler's 10 Artists You Need To Know, see below: