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 an old school country crooner from Pooler, Georgia, one who has already released one of our favourite singles of the year. We've also got an English pop songwriter behind hits for Dua Lipa, Fifth Harmony and Skrillex who has taken the country route on her first solo adventure, a Scottish actor turned-country troubadour from Nashville via Hill Country in Texas, and a classic country singer from Manassas, Virginia, who grew up obsessed with her miniature horse collection.

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 July 2025:

If you've ever popped a quarter into a jukebox when you're feeling down and stuck on a little Daryle Singletary to lighten the mood, then you'll know that when it comes to country music, there's no such thing as having too much fun.

A quick listen to the last two Cole Goodwin singles and you know that this is an artist who takes a particularly light hearted approach to their heartaches.

Released earlier in the year, the hilariously titled 'Women Want Me, Fish Fear Me' and the hard relatable 'Girlfriend's Got a Boyfriend' became welcome throwbacks to '90s country hits like 'She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy' and 'Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident)'. Even tender ballads like 'When You Get Home' and 'Catchin' On' are delivered with a knowing wink and a resigned smile.

The 24-year-old singer-songwriter from Pooler, Georgia, grew up listening to Vince Gill, Hank Williams Jr., Mark Chesnutt, George Strait, Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings, and he tips his hat to them all with his unashamedly twangy, neo-traditionalist sound. If Zach Top and Drake Milligan are top of the class for a certain kind of irreverent, old school country right now, then Cole Goodwin is that mysterious, wise cracking kid that just transferred in from a nearby school who all the guys want to sit with at lunch and all the girls want to hook up with.

"I would describe my sound as my own spin on the music that shaped me," he says, "I think my hometown and the people in it have molded me into exactly who I am as an artist and writer. It’s easy to find inspiration from the things and the people you love. That’s one of the reasons I still live in Georgia."

Introducing himself with the self-produced EP Soon Enough back in 2023, since then Goodwin has toured the Southeast playing honky tonks, clubs and festivals, as well as opening shows for artists including Zach Top and Billy Currington. Recently signed to Big Machine Records, more new music from Cole is coming this month as he crisscrosses the country opening on select dates of Luke Bryan’s Country Song Came On Tour.

'Girlfriend's Got A Boyfriend' is out now on Big Machine

Listen If You Like: Zach Top, Drake Milligan, Brad Paisley

Regular readers should already be familiar with Brooke Lee. It was just last week that Holler premiered the video for her latest single, 'Dandelion,' a duet with Lukas Nelson that felt like a mini manifesto for her free spirited, whole-hearted all-in approach to life.

"I had the kind of upbringing where I could hop in the car and be at the beach or the mountains by the afternoon," she says. "That freedom and spontaneity shaped a big part of who I am. I draw a lot of inspiration from being on the road and exploring new places. It’s something that pours directly into my songwriting."

Her songs often revolve around themes of travel, exploration and the experiences that come with a life spent out on the road and 'Dandelion' was the latest in a string of standalone singles this year from the smoky voiced singer that perfectly showcase her soulful take on classic country.

Born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, at 21 years old, she moved to Nashville to pursue a career in country music and began honing her craft in songwriting rooms and touring with artists like Willie Nelson, Gavin DeGraw, Redferrin and Wade Bowen. It was out on the road at Luck Reunion that she met Lukas Nelson.

"My sound feels like driving music," Brooke Lee says. "It’s the kind of thing you put on with the windows down. I want my songs to feel like motion or a movie. Like you’re going somewhere, feeling something, and living it out loud."

Like the perfect road trip soundtrack, Brooke Lee's songs are life-affirming steering wheel tappers that blend the breezy, west coast country pop of Sheryl Crow with the boot stomping sass of Lainey Wilson, putting a fresh new spin on country soul.

'Dandelion (feat. Lukas Nelson)' is out now on Spirit Nashville Recordings.

Listen If You Like: Ella Langley, Lainey Wilson, Sheryl Crow

Those of us who were raised in small towns never seem to stop thinking of there as “home.”

Raised in the tiny town of Toad Suck, Arkansas - a town with no stoplights and a population of 200 - Trey Pendley's songs capture something of the simplicity and quiet beauty of small town American life, as well as its quirks and eccentricities.

"I feel like it gave me insight into forgotten people and ways of life that happen all across the country," he says. "It’s a lifestyle that most people don’t know anything about. They’re forgotten, but they want to be. It’s a slow-centered, different way of life, and I think that inspires the life I live now with my family and the songs that I write. People seem to be intrigued by this kind of lifestyle, and it wasn’t until a few videos of mine took off and people were so entranced by it that I realized it wasn’t this way for everyone."

His breakout track, 'Daddy’s Son,' went viral all the way back in 2021. A heartfelt tribute to fatherhood and intergenerational ties, the song immediately resonated with a wider country audience. Four years on, and what feels like its first real follow up single, 'Drunk As Any Rich Man,' is released with a renewed push for the singer, newly signed to Leo33 and now based just outside of Nashville, where he lives with his family.

"Spent my last dime on a good time," he sings on the song that we crowned our Holler Spotlight Single of the Week when it came out last month. "A millionaire's life ain't for me / No I ain't got a penny / But I got all my friends with me / and we're as rich as any drunk man can be."

Growing up with no internet at home, his world revolved around cassette tapes, vinyl records, and an old guitar passed down from his grandfather, and his songs are filled with echoes from a bygone golden age of country.

"Lots of Merle Haggard, George Jones, Jim Croce, Motown kind of stuff, Gospel, and whatever else my grandpa had spinnin' on the turntable," he says. "He was an interesting fella, so it was a wide variety, then I had my dad playing Motley Crue, Queen, Kansas, Boston - I guess I really got a little bit of everything."

A small-town philosopher with a reassuring warmth in his delivery, his homespun americana and plainspoken lyricism exude a sense of tradition and authenticity without seeming to really ever be trying too hard. Like walking a gravel road at night and looking up at the stars or sitting with a beer on the same street corner you caught the bus to school from, these are songs where everyone knows everyone, and that's a good thing.

'Drunk as Any Rich Man' is out now on Leo33

Listen If You Like: Brent Cobb, Joshua Hedley, Colby Acuff

“I’ve got a pretty good knack for finding the next big star," Taylor Sheridan told the audience as he introduced Dani Rose to the stage at the Bosque Ranch in Texas. "And I think you’ll really like her.“

Recommendations in country music don't come much bigger than that these days. In the last few years the neo-Western TV show Yellowstone, created by Taylor Sheridan along with music supervisor Andrea von Foerster, has been putting the Western back in Country and become a huge driver for more left-of-centre country, Americana and red dirt artists, exposing people like Turnpike Troubadours, Colter Wall and Lainey Wilson to a prime time TV audience and boosting their listeners.

With five placements on Yellowstone, Dani Rose is one of those artists. Brought up on her parents' record collection, she positions herself somewhere between Shania Twain and Grace Potter, with a touch of Stevie Nicks and a soft spot for "powerful female vocals, big melodies and songs that balance fun with depth."

"I have vivid memories of dancing around the living room with my parents," she says. "My mom was a big Neil Diamond fan but also obsessed with George Strait and now Zach Top. I loved artists like Shania Twain and Tim McGraw. The Allman Brothers, the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Heart… classic southern rock and feel-good anthems you could dance to. The music was bold and fun with great melodies full of emotion. There was always music playing in our house, it was usually my dad playing piano and my mom yelling at him to turn on the grill or fix something."

"I’m actually at home right now with my sister and we’re trying to figure out how to make our little town where we’re from in Manassas, Virginia sound cool," she laughs. "It’s just a smallish town with a lot of Civil War history. We were surrounded by the Shenandoah and Blue Ridge Mountains and my family was big on adventure. Every weekend, my dad would pile us into the car for some kind of exploration visiting old battlegrounds, museums, forest trails, rivers and creeks."

"I was also obsessed with my miniature horse collection and these two islands that had wild horses in Virginia," she adds intriguingly. "Chincoteague and Assateague Islands, which is what got me into vaulting (like gymnastics on horseback) so I learned early on how to trust rhythm and movement. I think all of that finds its way into my music and live performances, I’m always chasing the wonder and excited to explore new places and meet new people."

Cast in the mold of OG noughties women of country like Miranda Lambert, Dani Rose is a natural country outlier with a similarly playful approach to genre, switching seamlessly between vulnerable, reflective ballads like 'Whiskey You're Cold' and 'Outsiders' to perky, unpretentious pop-tinged country cuts like 'California' and incendiary outlaw anthems like 'Queen of the Castle' and 'Good Mourning.'

"To me, songwriting should be honest, but that doesn’t mean it always has to be serious," she says. "I write with the stage in mind. I live for the live show, and that energy always finds its way into the music."

With a string of standalone singles going all the way back to 2014 and song placements in Fire Country, True Blood, Nashville, Roswell and Monarch, as well as Yellowstone, Dani Rose might not be completely unfamiliar to our Holler readers, but last year's Outsiders album and a duet with Brent Cobb earlier this year has turned the spotlight on her up to 20,000 watts. With appearances at Under The Big Sky and Bourbon & Beyond this Summer, as well as opening for Tim McGraw and a show at Bluebird café in Nashville, her star is only going to burn brighter.

Her latest single, 'Girl Math,' is already one of the songs of the year. The kind of quirky and brilliantly clever country song that Lainey Wilson would have a country number one with if she cut it.

'Girl Math' is available now.

Listen If You Like: Miranda Lambert, Ella Langley, Lainey Wilson

She's a global pop songwriting force behind hits for Dua Lipa, Fifth Harmony, Rita Ora and Skrillex among others, clocking up over three billion streams with songs like 'Scared To Be Lonely' and Iggy Azalea's 'Switch,' but now the English born singer-songwriter is embarking on her first solo project; and luckily for us, her genre of choice is country pop.

Her first single, 'All or Nothing,' written in Nashville with Michael Robinson and Ricky Manning, is a blast of glossy, hi-NRG country pop with a gigantic, stadium sized sing-a-long chorus that feels like it has the universal crossover potential of 'A Bar Song (Tipsy)' and 'Austin (Boots Stop Workin')'.

“'All or Nothing' is like a diary entry of the past few years," she says about the song. "Being torn between two places, two lives and ultimately navigating making 'the right' decision. I’m an all or nothing kinda girl, but being up against a million different variables, emotions and life choices the last year took a huge toll on me. Putting these feelings into words was really freeing for me."

Growing up listening to her dad's CD collection, the eclecticism of her teenage listening habits is reflected in the fearless, genre bending of her songwriting. Bob Dylan, Gladys Knight & The Pips, The Verve, Lauryn Hill, Eva Cassidy and Norah Jones are all in there somewhere, along with a penchant for a monster pop hook and an earwormy top line.

"I’ve always listened to and been inspired by the folk and country sound," she says. "I'm excited that for the first time in my career, I get to write and release the music that's authentic to me. Being a songwriter for so many years now, I think I’ve been able to find the bridge between folk-leaning lyrical stories and big pop melodies to create what I’ve always wanted to release, and writing with the Nashville community has inspired me so much and really helped me hone in and develop my sound."

"I've written a seven song EP that I am so excited to share," she says, explaining that the plan is to release a song every six weeks or so. "This EP truly is all the pieces of my heart and I can’t wait to share this journey with the world."

All Or Nothing' is out now.

Listen If You Like: Dasha, Kelsea Ballerini, Jessie Murph

Born in Edinburgh in Scotland, Callum Kerr moved to the Hill Country in Texas when he was a teenager, but there's still an unmistakeably soft Scottish lilt to his gutsy country croon. If Roddy Frame had left East Kilbride for Nashville as a teenager, maybe Aztec Camera might have ended up sounding something like Callum Kerr.

“Scottish born. Texas raised. Nashville livin,” as he describes it.

"These places shaped my musical tastes in totally different ways, but ways that I feel complement each other," he says. "In Edinburgh, the main music styles are pop and dance, with some indie rock and roll. When I got to Texas, I discovered country music and totally fell in love. Then I came to find out country music has deep roots in Scottish and Irish folk music, which is why it seemed so immediately relatable. Hearing country music for the first time was like opening my eyes for the first time and it completely changed my life - from then on out, I was obsessed."

Growing up on Alternative Rock and Emo like Nickelback, Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, country music has been in his bones from day one, thanks to a grandfather who idolised Willie Nelson and a father who blasted Garth Brooks at home. It wasn't until he moved to Texas though that it all fell into place, and a move to Nashville was only a matter of time.

"Country music is such a passion of mine that I would happily play, listen to, and create it for free as a hobby for the rest of my life," he says. "But knowing how strongly the genre has shaped me, I wanted to come to Nashville to see if I could make it part of my life in a bigger way."

Fresh off a string of performances at CMA Fest and having been invited by Dustin Lynch to make his Grand Ole Opry debut on the iconic Nashville stage at the end of July, it looks like it's going to be a big part of his life for the foreseeable future; something he'll have to find time for alongside his day job as an accomplished actor with roles in 13 films and television series. His credits include Netflix’s hit drama Virgin River, where he plays young Everett, and the live-action adaptation of One Piece, portraying the fan-favourite character Smoker.

After a string of singles in 2023, including a duet with fellow Scot Chris Andreucci on 'Tamed By Tennessee,' Kerr has spent 2025 teasing his forthcoming debut EP Roots Under Me, due out at the end of July with what we in the business call "back to back bangers".

"We hit so many different classic country storytelling topics. We have heartbreak, falling in love, being in love, making love," he laughs. "Drinking because things are good, drinking because they're bad, nostalgic hometown memories and more."

Roots Under Me EP is released on 25 July via ONErpm/Huff Co

Listen If You Like: George Birge, Corey Kent, Dylan Scott

"I call it guy-with-guitar-music," says Jake Minch when pressed to describe his sound, before hilariously adding. "I’ve also said, 'John Mayer but whiny' and 'Do you know who Conor Oberst is? - okay nevermind.'"

Conor Oberst might have become a less familiar reference point for Gen Z folk stars these days, but the latest wave of alt-folk singers owes its origins to the mid-noughties nu folk boom of artists like Bright Eyes, M Ward and Cat Power and even more so their transatlantic cousins, Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling and Noah And The Whale, whose fingerprints are all over the stadium sized contemporary folk of Noah Kahan, Shane Smith & The Saints and Dylan Gossett.

Jake Minch definitely draws more from his US antecedents, with his angsty anti-folk sensibilities and wide-eyed delivery. He has John Prine's eye for detail and Elliot Smith's self-deprecation, matched with a songwriter's gift that is all his own. His debut full length, George, finds the 22-year-old storyteller from Monroe, Connecticut, exploring grief, guilt and identity through the complexities in his personal relationships.

"It was great but boring, so I spent a lot of time 'somewhere else,'" he says about growing up in Monroe. "Growing up, my influences were YouTubers with guitars and crushes that did not like me back."

Recorded and produced between Los Angeles and Connecticut by Jake and Tony Berg (Taylor Swift, Boygenius) with contribution from Mason Stoops (Lizzy McAlpine, Role Model), and titled after Jake’s birth name, over 12 tracks, George encapsulates the angst and discomfort of growing up and leaving home with a disarming vulnerability.

Like a Great American Novel cut down to three-minute pop songs, his album captures small-town restlessness and alienation in the same way that Raymond Carver or Carson McCullers were always able to, with the added incentive that you can scream along to them at the top of your lungs.

“There are characters across the album,” he notes. “There’s my high school crush, my most recent ex, my parents, randomly my little sister at points, and myself. I’m experiencing a lot of change, and I think you can hear it.”

"I was living in LA and had just signed a record deal," he remembers about the times in his life that he draws from on George. "I did not have the resources to process the changes in my life and be anything but horribly honest and miserable. I wanted so badly to be Elliott Smith but I didn’t have the work ethic so I was just suicidal. It’s the story of me weaving in and out of that. I often have to say something out loud to know if I agree with it or not. It is also a lot of that."

“This album is a collection of my stories and experiences,” he leaves off. “My writing always comes from an authentic and honest place. People can take whatever they want from the project, but I just hope they can relate and maybe even see themselves in the music.”

George is out now on Mercury Records

Listen If You Like: Noah Kahan, Dylan Gossett, Bright Eyes

"I call it Mountain Soul," band leader and songwriter Cara Schulz says, trying to pin down the wildly eclectic sound of Give It To 'Em FLORABELLE! "It’s not quite country, not quite funk, and not exactly jazz - it’s somewhere in the middle. My sound blends my honky tonk roots and natural twang with the spirit and depth of jazz and soul."

Listening to the Missoula, Montana, based, honky tonk-soul funk super band is like being swept up and spun around in a cyclone of all their influences. It feels as much like a glorious celebration of countrified funk, jazz and soul as a ruthless desecration and complete reimagining of it.

"It’s also super performative," Schulz adds of their legendary live shows, a celebration of human connection, laughter, and inclusivity. "We love to be playful, showy, and even a little silly on stage. I want people to feel something and have a good time. And like any artist, I’ve been through a lot in life, so underneath the fun, there’s often a layer of pain, healing, and real emotion that runs through the songs. Since I write all of the music myself, you can really hear the depths of my diary in our tunes."

One of six kids growing up in the '90s, the jazz greats from Donny Hathaway and Etta James to Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington were always playing in the background, as well as the R&B of Boyz II Men, Brian McKnight, Mariah Carey and K-Ci & JoJo.

"From there, it was always about the feel," she says. "If the music has soul, I’m into it."

A six-song live album released last year, Live at Le Petit, captures the frenetically joyful and spiritually uplifting experience that is a Give It To Em' FLORABELLE live show. With its mix of tender jazzy, honky tonk standards and unhinged, hellfire rock and roll, rhythm and blues and raucous gospel soul, it captures them at their whole-hearted, two-fisted finest. While recent studio single, 'The Cowboy Song,' and the all-year-round seasonal song, 'Broke Down in Deer Lodge,' still manage to maintain the charm of their live shows, dipping into the more country colours of their palette.

"I’m from Cody, Wyoming, and also spent a big part of my childhood in Hamilton, Montana," Schulz says. "I grew up around cowboys, hunters, and hard work—lots of dusty boots and mountain mornings. But at the same time, I was surrounded by glamour—my mom was super stylish, and my grandparents were jazz musicians who introduced me to a whole world of music and performance."

"I had this mix of grit and sparkle from the start," she adds. "Singing jazz in small western towns taught me how to bring soul into any space. My background is definitely redneck - and rough around the edges - but I’ve always been a showgirl at heart."

Give It To 'Em FLORABELLE! (Live at Le Petit) is out now

Listen If You Like: Sierra Ferrell, Melissa Carper, Margo Price

You can take the band out of the garage, but you can't take the garage out of the band.

Jackson and the Janks, the Brooklyn based lo-fi NOLA-style country folk rhythm and blues band led by an Irish-American who used to busk in New Orleans, which boasts members of The Deslondes in its ranks, still rattles the garage doors off their hinges with their incendiary punk spirit.

Released last month on the legendary Jalopy label, their sophomore album, Write It Down, brings the New Orleans janks and the New York janks together as they let loose and tear up the rule book once again. With their New Orleans-inspired rhythm & blues, the band takes early rock & roll as a loose guidebook and rips it up, adding bass sax and pedal steel instead of lead guitar into a unique melting pot of raucous garage gospel rock and old timey jugband country folk.

"You could call it New Orleans R&B, garage gospel blues or rock and roll crooner jam," says band leader Jackson Lynch, who grew up listening to hardcore punk and Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, Irish fiddle music, country blues and hip hop. All that goes into the melting pot that makes up Jackson and the Janks' sound.

Formed when Lynch - also a member of old-time trio Down Hill Strugglers and a sometimes player with Nora Brown - was living in New Orleans, initially to play covers of gospel and rhythm & blues songs, Jackson and the Janks were inspired by classic New Orleans music like Bobby Charles, Irma Thomas, Smiley Lewis, James Booker, but also by his friends’ projects like Tuba Skinny, The Lostines, Esther Rose, and Chris Acker. The band themselves boasts Sam Doores of The Deslondes on drums and keys, Matt Bell (Esther Rose) on steel guitar, and Craig Flory from Tuba Skinny on bass sax.

Born and raised in Ireland, Jackson Lynch's grandfather was a traditional Irish fiddler and radio DJ, and he first discovered roots music via his dad’s record collection, which had everything from old-time to New Orleans rhythm & blues. He learned his first fiddle tunes from his grandpa, and he and his mom moved to the Lower East Side in New York City when he was eight.

After spending years living and busking on the streets of New Orleans alongside folks who later came to prominence, like Sierra Ferrell and Tuba Skinny, it feels like the time and the sound is right for Jackson and the Janks to follow in their footsteps.

"Sweet and sentimental at times, a cranking machine at others," Jackson Lynch says of their latest album. "I hope we’re still in the garage."

Write It Down is out now on Jalopy Records

Listen If You Like: Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, The Deslondes, Shakey Graves

"Dewsbury, Batley, Birstall, Gomersal, Mirfield, Heckmondwike, Liversedge and Cleckheaton in no particular order," says West Yorkshire singer songwriter Zach Thompson when asked where he's from. "Got rained on in all of them. But there wasn’t a lot going on really and I wasn’t prepared to start writing about school discos or playing football on the roundabout."

His sound is similarly unlocatable. Citing Appalachian music and the greats of modernist literature as key influences, and informed by the 60s folk revival and the extended influence of that in the pop music of its time, it also takes in Irish and Scottish songs he's picked up from playing in pubs. His debut Algebra Parable EP, released last month, contains four ballads and an interlude which emerge from a vague definition of the folk ballad.

Produced by saxophonist and composer Nye Banfield, it's a wonderfully confusing blend of traditional folk and jazz that seems to exist at the far edges of both with its loose, playful spontaneity. Everywhere in these songs there are peculiar little joys that take their time emerging. The recordings have the same unrestricted feel of Tim Buckley's Happy Sad perhaps or Richard Dawson's Peasant, but sound nothing like either.

On ‘Ireland’s Child’, classic Gaelic melodies collapse into a freewheeling live jam, as Thompson pushes his fusion of traditional folk and jazz to their limits.

"I don’t necessarily think it’s folk," he says. "I struggle to locate the meaning of that word as I get older. What I do isn’t traditional, though it takes influence from the traditional songbook. Having worked with Nye Banfield, I found I could unlock some of the orchestral potential of the songs, in a recording setting."

"I don’t think I’ll stick with this sound for much longer," he adds. "The recordings on this EP are pretty polished despite being recorded live and I would like to get further away from that. The live sound is a lot more frantic, loads of horns and strings wailing all over the place. And it’s never the same live, always different figurations of the same musicians. I try and play the songs differently each time as I get bored and don’t want the musicians to play a specific way. That way everyone is still locked in. Most of the musicians on the record come from a folk or jazz background, so our bread and butter is live performance, with an emphasis on improvisation. That way the songs are organic and can be recycled. It all comes from playing live really."

"I think the most important records I ever bought were Highway 61 Revisited and Rum Sodomy & the Lash," he says. It makes sense that these two records would resonate with him. Both were records that refuse to be contained by the restrictions and expectations of the genres they found themselves lumped into, putting all their energy into pushing against the limits.

"I’ve another EP on the way, whilst also sifting through songs for my debut album," he says about what the future holds. "I’m playing Left of the Dial in Rotterdam in October then hopefully a tour. Then I’ll change my name to Homer and take up professional sudoku or plate spinning."

The Algebra Parable EP is out now on Breakfast Records

Listen If You Like: Richard Dawson, Bob Dylan, Jake Bugg

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: