10 Country and Americana Artists You Need to Know

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

This month, we've got a Georgia troubadour who spent a year living on the road in an Airstream with just his dog for company to write his latest album, a 20-year-old wandering Yooper who has notched up 300 shows in the last two years alone and the very first student chosen by Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Ashley Gorley to serve as his apprentice in a newly launched mentorship programat Belmont University.

There's 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 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 2025:

"It’s straight up pop country and I will loudly and proudly say that," declares MaRynn Taylor about her new self-titled album. "I wanted my debut album to be called MaRynn. It’s a first name basis album for me. I think you can learn a lot about me from this album."

"I grew up with 90s country, so there are songs that have that hint of nostalgia in them," she says of her love for Trisha Yearwood, Jo Dee Messina, Shania, Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift and Miranda Lambert. "They raised me. It’s that with a modern twist. As for my lyrics, I write a lot about being in your twenties when it comes to dating, growing into adulthood and just life itself."

The result of all this is the delightful pop country mini masterpiece that is MaRynn. Produced by Josh Kerr, it's a 12-track collection of uplifting coming-of-age sleepover anthems that perfectly capture the essence of girlhood, heartbreak and love with a wit and charm that her growing girl gang of fans will hard relate to. She writes the kind of clever, bite-sized pop lyrics that scream out to be scrawled in giant capital letters all over school exercise books and sung at the top of your voice as you run up escalators in the mall.

"I have songs like 'season 2 of friends' which is about being in your twenties and realizing you aren’t behind, because we are the same age they were on the actual show!" Taylor says about the song that inspired her own loyal fans to refer to themselves as "friends."

"I’m building this thing from the ground up," she adds. "I want people to feel at home with me how I felt with all the artists I looked up to growing up. I want them to know me and vice versa. Plus, I am a huge fan of the show, and I am at that time in my life where we are still figuring it all out, together.”

"I have a song called 'pretty much' which is about being a woman in the world today. Growing up I learned to hate my body, and I know I’m not the only girl that feels that way," she says about the rest of the album. "I have songs like 'she broke up with the boy' which is a twist on the Trisha Yearwood song 'She’s In Love With The Boy.' Lastly, the song 'longer than me' is the last on the record, and it’s about wanting to be a good person and leave a good legacy behind… Which is my only goal in life. I want to be a good friend, I want to be known for that. And that’s why I wanted to leave everyone with that song on the record."

MaRynn Taylor was 12 years old when she found her guitar-shaped present wrapped under the Christmas tree. After that, she started writing poems that she turned into lyrics and taught herself how to play the guitar and her songwriting helped her navigate those difficult teenage years. Now 24 years old, six years after moving to Nashville, the Michigan-born singer-songwriter aims to channel those anxieties and vulnerabilities into storytelling lyrics that uplift other girls – just as Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Kelsea Ballerini did for her.

"My mission now is to reach that girl," MaRynn says. "I know what that's like, and I know that someone like me could help someone like that who is writing songs in her bedroom."

MaRynn Taylor’s self-titled debut album is out now on Black River Entertainment.

Listen If You Like: Dasha, Mackenzie Carpenter, Megan Moroney

25-year-old Jonah Kagen won't be a new name to everyone. He's been consistently blowing up ever since his debut single all the way back in 2021, but with his 2024 Black Dress EP, which included the monster viral hit 'God Needs the Devil,' he planted his flag firmly in Americana sand.

His latest album, Sunflowers and Leather, was written after a stalling relationship ended and Jonah packed up his belongings into a beat up truck and an old airstream that Jonah says “already had some magic in it.” He removed the couch from the airstream and loaded in his recording equipment to make a mobile studio and headed for Montana, driving from his parents' home in South Carolina and making stops along the way across the American South and West, visiting Nashville, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Texas. All the while writing songs that reflected the emotional and physical journey he was on.

"I spent a year living on the road in an Airstream with just me and my dog, and Sunflowers and Leather is a collection of stories from my time out there," he says. "It is, more than anything, a byproduct of the way I was living out there."

Originally from Savannah, Georgia, Jonah Kagen pitches his deeply existential, soul baring songs up on the edges of Forest City, facing away into the great wilderness and wildness of America, trying to make sense of all the self-doubt, heartache and grief that occupies his mind. Switching between bombastic indie folk and introspective heartland Americana, he delivers his songs with a well-worn and weathered rasp that sounds like it’s been dragged up from the very depths of his soul and gently ripped out of him.

"Savannah is a city with a ton of history and lots of ghost stories, so I grew up with somewhat of an infatuation with both," Kagen says. "I love learning about what used to go on somewhere, and I’m also really into horror and creepy stuff, so growing up in Savannah definitely played a role in that. That said, a huge theme throughout this album is the notion that things are naturally forgotten as time passes, but they can live on through art and stories, so I imagine that those thoughts came from a brain fundamentally shaped by my hometown."

Sunflowers and Leather is out now on Arista Records

Listen If You Like: Sam Barber, Noah Kahan, Zach Bryan

"I’d describe my sound as blending a dreamy, modern edge with the timeless soul of country music’s golden era," Belles says, practically doing our job for us. "I love the honest voices of women from that time, Dolly, Loretta, Tammy - vulnerable, raw, and strong, but it also has an edge and I’m just so inspired by that. I like to think my music is where vintage collides with modern."

Hailing from Omaha, Nebraska, Kelli Belles, AKA simply Belles, was raised on the women of late '60s country with a little early Linda Ronstadt thrown in along with the pop radio she heard playing around the house. Starting off in the country bars around Nebraska when she was14 years old, she formed the mother daughter duo The Belles, with her mother, herself a part of the successful sister pop harmony group Mulberry Lane, and after relocating to Nashville at 19, Belles launched her solo career with the single 'All Hat No Cowboy' all the way back in 2021.

Fast forward five years and her latest self-titled EP feels like the fully rounded classic country record she was always destined to make. Produced by Sam Grow and Johnny Gates, it's a six-song collection that explores themes of love, heartbreak, resilience and self-discovery, while the viral Blake Wood duet, 'Crazy as Me,' is the sort of carefree, fun loving country love song that Dolly and Porter or Loretta and Conway would've cut back in the day.

"This EP feels like my introduction in the truest sense – it’s six songs that really introduce who I am as an artist," she says. "It’s a mix of strength, vulnerability,and a little bit of sass, rooted in classic country storytelling but with my own edge. Each track shows a different side of me - there are story songs, heartbreak songs, drinking songs, love songs."

Listening to Belles latest EP feels a bit like watching an episode of '90s British TV sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart, where Nicholas Lyndhurst played Gary, an accidental time traveller who leads a double life after discovering a time portal allowing him to travel between the London of the 1990s and the same area during WWII, except in Belles case it's set in a dimly lit Nashville bar and she's switching between 2025 and country music's late '60s golden age.

Even the radio static that opens the EP feels like a signpost to where Belles is going to magically transport you. These are Sad Girl country songs of the very finest quality. Listening to songs like 'Porcelain' or 'Happy Hour' feels like taking a hidden portal through to another magical country music dimension where the air hangs soft and heavy in a honky tonk bar as a scratched up old sad country song clicks into place on the jukebox and the locals stare off into their beers.

The Belles EP is out now on East Music Row records

Listen If You Like: Belle Frantz, Lauren Watkins, Kacey Musgraves

If you've spent any time at all partying this Summer, then chances are you'll have come across Jake Banfield's infectious viral single 'Lasso' at some point in the night.

“We knew that we wanted it to be a party starter,” he explains. “When it comes on from the first second, from the beat drop of the fiddle, everything is different. It has country roots, but also hip-hop, pop-type, melodic stuff is where we wanted to go. I could tell when we were in the room that it felt good.”

'Lasso' is typical of Jake Banfield's energetic mix of Hi-NRG country and smouldering hip hop, but he's also capable of more reflective downbeat moments on ballads like 'Thought of You' and recent RaeLynn collaboration 'Still Feels the Same.'

"I loved guys like George Strait, Garth Brooks, Sam Hunt and Florida Georgia Line but also grew up on Drake, Lil Wayne, T-Pain and that whole era," he says. "I think that blend is why my sound leans into both worlds now."

Jake Banfield is the latest in the athlete-picks-up-sporting-injury-and-turns-to-songwriting pipeline that has previously given us country legends like Brett Young, Jake Owen, Chase Rice, Sam Hunt and even recently, Tucker Wetmore.

Growing up in the small Oklahoma town of Eufaula, Mannford, Banfield was an All-State point guard who had his sights set on his hoop dreams. Plans for a successful collegiate run and plans for a pro career in Europe felt possible, but those hopes were dashed when he suffered a knee injury that wasn’t treatable through a surgical procedure. Bedridden, he picked up a guitar at a local pawn shop and, through YouTube, learned how to play on his own.

Drawing on his love of hymns and harmonies that he experienced growing up going to church, along with the appeal of the ‘80s hair metal, ‘90s hip-hop and turn of the century country and pop music that informed his secular listening, the college-aged student decided to channel the angst of his injury and a few weeks after he was healthy to play basketball, the pandemic struck. To work his way through the disappointment, Banfield took to writing music, building a fanbase online through TikTok.

Five years on and he's on the edge of releasing his debut album, Open Bars, out in September through EMPIRE. From stomp-and-clap country floor fillers like 'Anywhere But Home' and 'Lasso' to the laid back island reggae of 'Sunburn' and down-home bro-country anthems like 'Open Bars' and 'Boys Don't Cry,' Jake Banfield isn't afraid to experiment. He has the same infectious, sensitive party boy appeal of Sam Hunt and it's impossible to resist.

"This album is me showing the world who I really am," he says proudly. "It’s high-energy, it’s fun, but it’s also got those moments that cut deep. I wanted to make something that all people can find a song and can relate to no matter what they’re going through."

“My music career came from the injury, which was like the saddest time in my life,” he says. “And then it ended up being a blessing in disguise and entirely changed my life."

Open Bars is released on 26 September via EMPIRE

Listen If You Like: Sam Hunt, Morgan Wallen, Graham Barham

It feels like every moment since Alyssa Flaherty uprooted from Annapolis, MD, and settled in Nashville, fully immersing herself in the music scene and dedicating herself to mastering the guitar and honing her songwriting craft, has been leading up to her latest EP, Heartbreak, Thank You.

"I grew up listening to all kinds of music. I would study and explore a bunch of different genres," she says. "I loved country music for the storytelling. I grew up listening to Shania Twain, Kenny Chesney, Martina McBride, Toby Keith and Taylor Swift, but I also found a huge love for '70s and '80s rock music such as Fleetwood Mac, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Guns N’ Roses, Bonnie Raitt and Linda Ronstadt.

Like a backwards fairytale that traces the natural progression of heartbreak and ends with an unexpected appreciation for everything that it accidentally ends up teaching you, the songs on Heartbreak, Thank You will hit you as hard and resonate as deeply as Carly Pearce's 29: Written in Stone or Kelsea Ballerini's PATTERNS. This is country heartbreak elevated to an artform. Flaherty standing up and taking centre stage as the quintessential country stoic. If Patsy Cline was still singing today she'd be cutting records like Heartbreak, Thank You.

"Heartbreak is something that can feel endless and I think it’s so important to remind yourself that it’s not an ending, it’s a beginning, and you have the power to change that narrative and turn it into something really beautiful for yourself," Flaherty says about the EP.

Heartbreak, Thank You EP is out now on Make Wake Records

Listen If You Like: Kelsea Ballerini, Carly Pearce, Shania Twain

"I am at my happiest when I'm on the road, writing music and singing those songs to strangers," Jessey Adams admits, already an itinerant, road weary wanderer at just 20 years old with over 300 shows notched up in the last two years alone.

Growing up in mid-Michigan, she spent a lot of her childhood up north in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with her family, and it's that area's rugged natural beauty, endless Great Lake coastlines and deep forests that seem to have been soaked up into the freewheeling, fearless feel of her songs.

"I was raised in a great town but I've always felt more at home in the Upper Peninsula," Adams says. "I've travelled across the world since graduating high school, going through the majority of the US and multiple other countries, but I think I've spent the most amount of time in western North Carolina."

She has the sort of voice that shakes the birds out of the trees, adding a uniquely country soul twist to her fun filled, fiddle-and-stomp Appalachian folk. Latest single 'Old Appalachia' is a love letter to those North Carolina mountains and the people that live there, but it feels like a katamari of all the life lessons she's picked up on every mile of road she's ever driven along.

"Appalachia definitely has its own flavor with the mountains and culture," she says. "But it hits my soul the same way that the Upper Peninsula does. I think that's why I feel so drawn to it. It combines the feeling of 'home' with my love for the mountains."

"Western North Carolina was the first place I could get shows in when I started traveling outside of Michigan for music," she adds. "I was 18 years old and going out into the world alone without any kind of map. Every person I met treated me like family and cheered me on in such an incredible way, that I still think about it years later. I also spent almost every day I was there hiking through the mountains. Hundreds of miles. I feel like I learned a lot about myself doing that, which wound up reflecting in my songwriting."

'Old Appalachia' is out now

Listen If You Like: Gabriella Rose, Meghan Patrick, The Castellows

Sometimes you can hear a songwriter's influences all over the songs they write, and then there are other times when a songwriter manages to transcend all the influences so completely that you can only guess at what it was that went into them for all those magical otherworldly songs to come out.

Ava Hall is one such songwriter. Raised on a soundtrack of Dolly Parton, Garth brooks, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Frank Sinatra and her "all time favorite" Hank Williams Jr. in a "little big town outside of Detroit," her songs sound completely unlike any of her influences.

She writes the kind of country songs that sound both old timey and traditional at the same time as feeling refreshingly contemporary and like they couldn't have been written at any time but now.

"I grew up on country music and warm Busch Lite so the sound was as natural as it could ever be," she jokes about her peculiarly indified Gen-Z take on classic country.

As the very first student chosen by Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Ashley Gorley to serve as his apprentice in a newly launched mentorship programat Belmont University where she is majoring in Songwriting, she graduates this year with a distinction, which should be notice enough given that she is a songwriter of the very finest quality

Thoughtful, emotional and unmistakably country, she's one of a new generation of modern country folk storytellers like Clover County, Lily Fitts, Evan Honer and Ken Pomeroy who are completely reshaping what the genre looks and sounds like, dialing down the twang and bringing a simple sincerity to everything she does. Only three singles in and Ava Hall is already an artist to feel genuinely hopeful and excited about.

'What About Yours' is out now on JAVA Records

Listen If You Like: Clover County, Jess Williamson, Waxahatchee

"Sizzle music," says Dillon Warnek mysteriously, when pushed to describe his sound. "I want the waitress to have to warn you that the plate is hot. I like things that sizzle."

She would be right to warn you. Dillon Warnek is piping hot right now.

A construction worker by day, a piano balladeer at night, Dillon Warnek has emerged in recent years as one of Nashville's worst kept secrets among those in the know. A prodigious flame keeper of the spirit of '70s songwriters like Warren Zevon, Randy Newman, Loudon Wainwright and Bob Dylan, Dillon Warnek is the kind of truly great American songwriter who can be as silly sometimes as he can be serious. His latest album, As the Neighbors Tried to Sleep is filled with tales from a twisted, mythological America that feel like someone setting a collection of Raymond Carver short stories to music.

"I spent my formative years in a strange little valley east of Seattle, Washington," he says. "I don’t necessarily know how it influenced me, and I don’t know that I should know how it influenced me, but I do know it had to have influenced me. Maybe it gave me an inclination to be drawn to characters and fascinated by the circumstances that come with characterdom. Saying it out loud though makes it feel like a lie, so who knows. A word definitely got made up in the process."

Wry character studies filled with colourful archetypes from the underside of America, his narratives feel deliciously tangible and relatable, like songs inspired by overheard conversations in cocktail bars on weekday afternoons or sitting in train station waiting rooms. As funny as they are enlightening, songs like 'Pistol and a List of Demands,' 'Bad Lawyers and Worse Luck' and 'Other People's Money' are paeans to life's great uncelebrated, driven by Warnek's razor sharp observations and writerly wit.

He even has the seal of approval from Jeremy Ivey and Margo Price, who makes a guest appearance on the 'Speeding Bullet out of Georgia' on the new album and the perfectly Dylanesque 'Bluebird.'

As the Neighbors Tried to Sleep is out now

Listen If You Like: Izaak Opatz, The Kernal, Nick Shoulders

As the nights draw in and the cold winter mornings creep up on us, we're all looking for a little comfort wherever we can find it. Will Jones serves up the kind of creamy traditional country that will always have us going back for seconds and thirds, with a sound that blends Appalachian blue-eyed soul with hard-edged honky tonk traditionalism. As warm and delicious as a home baked apple pie, listening to his songs feels like sinking your teeth into something heartwarming and familiar but with a fresh-out-of-the-oven hotness in every bite.

Raised in Cana, VA, a little farm community tucked up against the Blue Ridge Mountains and born into the family band The Cana Ramblers, Will Jones was singing lead and playing guitar by age six.

“I knew three chords and the truth before I even knew my ABCs,” he says. "Calling a place like that 'home' comes with the type of history and tradition that'll stick with you for a lifetime. From the culture of bluegrass to the simple way of living, Cana made me the man I am, and that comes through in the way I write and play country music."

Now based in Nashville, he's taken that Blue Mountain front-porch storytelling down the to the honky tonks of Music City with a "Hillbilly honky-tonk" sound that honours bluegrass pioneers like Tony Rice and Flatt & Scruggs and nods to '80s neo-traditionalists like Bill Anderson, Dwight Yoakam and Ricky Skaggs as he forges them into something distinctly his own.

“Steeped in tradition but a little wild, free, and unpredictable,” he grins, “that’s me.”

He's performed alongside some of country and bluegrass’s biggest names, including Jon Pardi, Ashley McBryde, Josh Turner, Tracy Lawrence, and Gavin Adcock, as well as bluegrass royalty like Ralph Stanley, Chris Thile, Sierra Hull, and Ben Haggard, and now the time feels right from him to take centre stage.

'Come On In' is out now on Lady Luck Songs/Blue Harbor Music

Listen If You Like: Zach Top, Midland, Jake Worthington

Two singles in and Brady Brazeal might be bubbling along on a low simmer right now, but with the heat he's got under him it feels like he's about to boil over at any minute.

Raised in the south, the 18-year-old country singer-songwriter from Saltillo, Mississippi, developed a deep connection to country music thanks to the car rides of his youth and it's a soundtrack that he's reimagining with a distinctly Gen-Z country take on it.

"Growing up I heard all types of music from my parents, but country music really stuck with me," he reminisces. "Me and mom used to ride around blasting 90's country. My mom was a huge influence for my music journey."

It's a musical journey that's taken him all the way through his difficult teenage years. Picking up a guitar in high school, by age 12 he had begun writing songs to express himself, and with only two self-penned songs out in the world so far, he's already proving himself to be a proficient and versatile songwriter.

"I’d say my sound is like a soulful rasp that really shows my emotions when I’m singing," he says. It's a sound that sits him alongside singer songwriters like Sam Barber and Dylan Gossett in a country landscape that increasingly feels as indebted to the stadium folk of Mumford & Sons and Hozier as it does Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan.

"The plan is to release one more song after the 'I Got to Thinkin'' release and hit the ground running at the top of the new year!" he says. "Keep pushing and really make a name for myself doing what I love."

His latest single, 'I Got To Thinkin'' is out now

Listen If You Like: Sam Barber, Ole 60, Bakyer Blankenship

Listen to a selection of songs from our 10 Artists You Need To Know on the playlist below.

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