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 blue collar troubadour from the Northeastern hills of Oklahoma, a Georgia Girl who's made New Orleans her home throwing everything from jugband blues and '90s indie rock to chart pop and street corner jazz into her country folk and a 13-year-old country singer songwriter from Pittsburgh, PA, proving that age really is just a number.

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 August 2025:

Originally from Seward, Nebraska, Scott Wolverton is as country as they come. Whether he was helping herd cattle on his family's farm or training for what would become a successful college baseball career, through his family and his faith, he learned the value of hard graft, discipline and to appreciate the smaller things in life from a young age.

"My family is very agriculturally based as my dad is a veterinarian and my mom works for the country 4-H extension office," Wolverton says. "I grew up around and working with horses and cattle, while also playing sports and doing club activities. Through those things I learned a lot of life lessons like hard work, dedication, love, and the value of community. My home and family is what I lean on the most and truly is what made me into the person I am today, while also having a strong influence on my writing and music."

"My dad had three CDs in his truck, Queen, Elton John, and Johnny Cash," he says. "My mom enjoyed Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Bob Seger, Fleetwood Mac and a ton of others. The first song I remember really loving was 'Shoulda Been A Cowboy' by Toby Keith. As I got to high school and college, I got into groups and artists like Turnpike Troubadours, Flatland Cavalry, Ian Munsick, Ryan Bingham, more of that Americana type Country music."

Lured by the country music legends he grew up listening to, Wolverton packed up his truck and headed east on Highway 34 for Nashville, but it's the vastness of the farmlands and the gently rolling landscape of the Great Plains that still shapes his sound.

"I like to think it sounds like you’re standing in a wide-open space like the plains," he says. "Taking it all in."

After releasing his debut album, Chasing a Simple Feeling, in 2023, a string of singles this year has built on that early buzz and it feels like it's only a matter of time before a 'Cattleman's Call' or a 'Do Si Do' has a viral moment of its own.

Although his country folk might take its cues from artists like Zach Bryan and Dylan Gossett, his songs have a warm and balanced, widescreen quality that draws from the heartland rock of Mellencamp and Springsteen, giving his songs a soft melancholy and a wide-eyed sense of wonder that sets them apart.

'Cattleman's Call' is out now.

Listen If You Like: Dylan Gossett, Zach Bryan, Sam Barber

"I’m a Georgia girl to my core and I think that comes across in the music I make," Olivia Barnes says. "There’s always some sort of twang in whatever music I write, but I’ve never seen myself as strictly a country artist."

If you're thinking Olivia Barnes is the next Megan Moroney, think again. She's throwing everything from jugband blues and '90s indie rock to chart pop and street corner jazz into her country folk gumbo.

Born and raised just outside of Atlanta, her parents both went to university in Georgia in the '90s and lived in Athens at a time when R.E.M., Dave Matthews Band, and Widespread Panic ruled the city, which had a big influence on her growing up and the way she makes music. As did the classic rock of Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, The Eagles, and The Grateful Dead.

"Classic rock is what made me want to be my own artist," she says. "I was entranced by the stories behind the bands and the culture surrounding rock and roll in the '70s. As I got older, I started forming my own taste in music. I was obsessed with artists like Tedeschi Trucks Band, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Cage the Elephant, Tyler Childers, Sheryl Crow and so many more."

Now based in New Orleans, she's spent the last five years soaking up the local songwriters and musicians who make NOLA the musical wellspring it's become in recent years. It was here that Barnes found both the inspiration for her songs and a musical community to write them in. Sharing a house in in Bayou St. John with three other singer-songwriters, Hans Williams, Phin and Lyla George, they half-jokingly compare their neighbourhood - where her drummer Jake Gartenstein lives two houses down and other local singer-songwriters live mere blocks from her mid-city home - to the New Orleans version of Laurel Canyon.

“My housemates and I always talk about how unique our situation is," Barnes says. "We’re all artists who inspire each other, live together, and work together and all we have to do is step outside our door and there’s even more musicians and artists we all love, respect, and are inspired by. I’m fully aware that I’m currently living in what I’ll one day call ‘the good old days’. I just want to embrace every moment I have with these people in this very special place.”

"Being able to step into a dive bar and hear some of, genuinely, the best music I’ve ever heard is mind-bending to me and there’s a well of talent in this city that I am constantly drawing inspiration from," she says. "Playing with musicians who have a blues, funk, and jazz background has also been really fun and has pushed me to think outside of the box when it comes to making country music."

With only a couple of songs released, you already get the feeling Olivia Barnes is a very special kind of artist. She writes the kind of songs that make you want to grab the aux at every party you go to, just because you want everyone to know how great they are.

Last year she dropped her misfit party anthem, 'Marry Mississippi,' just in time for New Years Eve, upsizing her ramshackle, country folk with anthemic, poppy hooks and a giant joyful clap-a-long chorus, and now she releases its follow up and, no surprise, it's just as brilliant.

Inspired by the likes of John Prine, Blaze Foley, Hurray for the Riff Raff, and Dean Johnson, 'Oyster Song,' has the laid-back, bindle-swinging feel of an old Roger Miller song, with its witty, introspective storytelling bundled up as a hummable coming-of-age tale of what it feels like to be a young woman trying to make sense of the world in her twenties in New Orleans.

'Oyster Song' is released on 15 August

Listen If You Like: Noeline Hofmann, Maggie Antone, Gabriella Rose

"I come from a long line of blue-collar hard workers - boilermakers, construction workers, loggers - people who built things by hand and took pride in doing it," says Roark about growing up in the Northeastern hills of Oklahoma. "That taught me a lot about how to be a man and chase after the things you want in life and to be proud of who you are and where you come from."

On the heels of two EPs, Better Man in 2023 and Tenkiller in 2024, Lance Roark's forthcoming album Bad Reputation is due out in November. An almost guaranteed breakout record, the album finds the Red Dirt troubadour pushing his sound out even further into the swamp as he soaks up the influences of the music he grew up surrounded by with hints of bluegrass, blues and rock and roll mixing it up in there.

Raised on Ricky Skaggs, Tony Rice, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson. Eventually, he started digging into Southern Rock bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Marshall Tucker Band, and The Allman Brothers Band, along with Oklahoma legends like Jason Boland and The Stragglers, Cross Canadian Ragweed and Turnpike Troubadours. The latter a becoming a particularly serendipitous favourite.

After becoming a father at age 16, Roark put off any serious pursuit of music until he was well into his twenties, but, playing one night at a bar in Tahlequah in the wake of the pandemic, Roark ran into RC Edwards - best known as the bassist and co-founder of The Turnpike Troubadours, but a singer and songwriter in his own right, and a proud proponent of local Red Dirt artists - and the two became fast friends, brief bandmates in Edwards’ band and co-writers.

Roark and Edwards have since co-written a pair of Turnpike Troubadours songs, 'Chipping Mill' off Turnpike Troubadours' 2024 comeback record A Cat in the Rain, and 'Ruby Ann,' from their 2025 album, The Price of Admission. In a moment of fun Americana intertextuality, the character "Ruby Ann" also turns up in Roark's own 'Colorado High.'

"That song started with my wife and I talking about how people hold onto things in life they know are bad for them," Roark explains. "That ‘Colorado High’ chorus was referenced in the song I wrote with Turnpike, ‘Ruby Ann’, and it’s like two different sides of the same coin. It’s ups and downs in life. But the 83 Blue Chevy in that song is real and I wrecked it."

Paradoxically, it's his faithfulness to being true to his own story that makes Lance Roark's songs so deeply relatable. Full of a sort of wistful working class resistance, there's blood and dirt and tenderness in these songs, which are as singular as they are universal, only bolstered by their elegiac, stadium sized production. If Manic Street Preachers had been from hills of Oklahoma instead of the Welsh Valleys, Everything Must Go might have sounded something like Bad Reputation.

Bad Reputation is released on 21 November on Tenkiller Records marketed and distributed by Thirty Tigers

Listen If You Like: Turnpike Troubadours, Josh Abbott Band, Parker McCollum

You probably already know KIRBY from the hits she's written for Rihanna, Paul McCartney, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato, or from voicing fictional pop star Ni’jah on Donald Glover's Amazon Prime series Swarm. You could be aware of her viral fandom from her 2022 single 'Black Leaves' or maybe you know her for her activism, which prompted the American breakfast brand Aunt Jemima to change their name to the Pearl Milling Company. Perhaps you caught her out on the road with John Legend, Leon Bridges or Pink Sweat$, or performing with Black Thought on The Tonight Show.

However you might already be acquainted with her, you are about to get to know and love her even more deeply. On her recent singles, 'Thick n Country' and 'The Man' she brings her artistry, upbringing and vision into full focus with an explosive blend of blues, gospel, R&B and southern country soul that's the most fun you'll have listening to politically-charged pop songs all year.

"My last name comes from the plantation that is the birthplace of the blues," she says, explaining how her full name, Kirby Lauryen Dockery, comes from Mississippi's Dockery Plantation, widely considered the birthplace of Delta blues. Her music is dedicated to those ancestors who worked and sang on that Dockery Plantation. "I sing for those who sang on the land they worked and tilled for, but never owned."

Since its inception, Americana has been defined as contemporary music that incorporates elements of various, mostly acoustic, American roots music styles; including country, rock, folk, gospel and bluegrass, resulting in a distinctive roots-oriented sound that lives in a world apart from the pure forms of the genres upon which it may draw, and by that definition KIRBY has is making quintessential Americana. This is futuristic southern country blues steeped in history, heritage and tradition, but reimagined as something unlike anything else, as KIRBY reclaims the South as a place to not be feared or judged.

"I’m a Memphis-born, Mississippi southern woman who has been influenced by her small church on a hill in Eudora, MS, her grandmother Cora, and Johnnie Taylor playing in a Sierra pick-up on a Saturday night," Kirby says.

"You visit places where ancestors toiled, died, and bled, and somehow the grass is still green," she says. "There's sadness, yes. But also resilience. I want to reclaim what has been linked to oppression. I want to say: Today, this empowers me."

"When I go to the Dockery Plantation and stand on the land that my ancestors picked cotton on, sang on, danced on, and cried on, how can I not feel a responsibility to tell their story?" she adds. "To try and own my masters because those who started the blues indeed had a master. I've chosen hymns over hits, stories over samples, and truth over trends. If any of the latter happen to accompany this album, Lord knows I would be grateful; but the mission now is much bigger than me. My voice is just a leaf on a long-standing Magnolia tree in Mississippi, with roots that span into the 1800s. And as a leaf on the branch of my ancestry tree, I am determined to sing, sing, and sing again."

Anyone who has fallen hard for Tanner Adell's post-genre country pop, Pillbox Patti's apocalyptic G-Funk infused gangsta country or Allison Russell's The Returner in recent years will be head over heels with KIRBY.

This is bastard pop done Southern style, with its respectful mash up of everything from swampy delta blues and New Orleans jazz to hip hop, gospel-tinged R&B and raucous country funk. If Americana is the broad church it always purports to be then KIRBY is delivering a pew pounding, foot stomping, hand clapping state of the nation sermon to its congregation.

"My church was CME, so we grew up on foot-stomping traditional hymns," she explains. "My mother used to play me Luther Ingram and I remember thinking 'WHO IS THIS MAN?' My dad was a certified blues man who loved Johnnie Taylor on Saturdays, and the Canton Spirituals on Sunday."

'Thick n Country' is out now

Listen If You Like: Tanner Adell, Pillbox Patti, Beyoncé

"I’m beach-born, but Nashville-made," Big Loud's latest signing Timmy McKeever declares about growing up country in Huntington Beach, CA." I went from the sand to the stage, carrying a West Coast ease into Nashville’s grit."

Joining a chart-topping roster that includes Morgan Wallen, ERNEST, Hailey Whitters and HARDY among its ranks, McKeever's first single for Big Loud is the sultry meet cute 'Hold You To It.'

"It's a fast, flirty anthem about daring someone to back up their bold talk with real action," he says. Which is exactly what Timmy McKeever is doing with his music. This is big energy country music with a gritty rock edge perfect for blasting on a Friday night. It's the kind of music you put on that makes you walk a bit differently, with a little more swagger and self-belief.

Since the release of his debut album, Devils & Angels, last December he's racked up nearly 20 million streams and he's logged over 400 live shows, including opening slots for Cody Johnson, Ashley Cooke, Gabby Barrett, Lee Greenwood, Dylan Scott, Chris Janson and Drew Baldridge.

Growing up listening to Eric Church, Jason Aldean, Led Zeppelin and "country storytelling with a rock 'n' roll edge," he's been making a name for himself through grassroots hustle and raw talent, cultivating a loyal fanbase from the ground up and now, with Big Loud in his corner, he's poised to reach an even wider stage.

“I'm beyond excited to officially join the Big Loud family, I truly can't imagine a better place to call home,” shares McKeever on signing. “I've poured my heart into this new music and I can't wait for the fans to hear it!”

'Hold You To It' is out now on Big Loud/Droptine Recordings under exclusive license to Mercury Records/Republic Records

Listen If You Like: Morgan Wallen, Tucker Wetmore, Graham Barham

It's not a sentence we could ever have seen ourselves writing six months ago, but pop coutry's next big superstar could be from... Solihull. The unassuming market town in the West Midlands, England, is where Gen-Z crossover pop country queen Bellah Mae grew up and in the last few years, the 22-year-old singer-songwriter has taken it upon herself to give TikTok's broken hearted a place to put their pain with pop anthems like 'Date Your Dad,' 'Drama King' and 'Boyfriend of the Year' as well as on her Hot Ex Girlfriends Podcast.

The recent lane switch into country comes as no surprise from the self-professed Hannah Montana stan who was picked up by Dolly Parton’s manager Danny Nozell and invited to Nashville when she was 17 and was famously front row at Taylor Swift's Speak Now tour when she was nine.

Her double barrel of singles so far this year, 'Bad Day to Be My Ex' and 'Sting,' lean heavily into the confessional country pop of artists like Kelsea Ballerini, Ashley Cooke and Ingrid Andress and are hopefully everything we can come to expect more of from her new direction. Hi-NRG eye-rolling no-fucks-given hot feminist take downs of toxic exes and all the good-for-nothing baby men that have ever been dumb enough to cross her.

"The jury's in, you're a piece of shit and whatcha want me to do about it," she sings, mock sweetly on 'Sting.' "I'm like yes, your honor, I got hotter, sue me and ooh, that's gotta sting."

Ouch. We love it!

'Sting' is out now on EMI under exclusive license to Universal Music

Listen If You Like: Ashley Cooke, Ingrid Andress, MAYCE

"My sound is soulful, conversational, and human," Thomas Edwards says when pushed to describe his sound. "I believe that the humanity of my music is what allows me to connect with my fans."

"If you ask my friends what my sound is they’ll say, 'He’s loud'”, he adds laughing.

Hailing from Kingsport, TN, up in the corner of East Tennessee by Virginia and North Carolina, Thomas Edwards has a distinctly outlier's way about him. First discovering his voice singing in church, by middle school, he'd added cello to his repertoire and unknowingly began following a path to the big stage that led to him signing with Warner Music Nashville last month.

"East Tennessee as a whole is full of country music history and definitely had a huge influence on me," he explains. "Musicians have a pure relationship with music back home - making music for the sake of making music, not to be heard or seen. My family definitely is like this and continues to be a huge influence on my music."

"Growing up I listened to a whole bunch of stuff that kinda shaped who I am as an artist," Edwards says. "My family was the first source of music around me. My mom was a music minister, and my dad was a fiddle player, so from the jump it was gospel and bluegrass. I never had an idol or one singular influence as far as a specific artist but was blessed that my parents loved great music - from Ray Charles to Merle Haggard to old church hymns. From there, my music palette expanded to a little bit of everything."

But under Friday night lights in high school, Thomas found a second passion: football. That drive led him to the storied gridiron of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, an experience that inspired his 2023 debut, 'Runnin’ Through That T.'

Edwards made his major label debut last month with 'Drunk Enough,' a gloriously sloppy bar song that celebrates all the things Edwards has ever been inebriated enough to do over the years, that don't include leaving the bar with the girl who's been bugging him all night.

Like a modern-day Bobby Bare, Thomas Edwards delivers his boozy barstool anthems with dry wit and genuine pathos. Sing-talking his droll, irreverent lyrics with a sideways grin as he struggles to be heard above rowdy whoops and laughter and joyfully off-key singalongs. In a world where Morgan Wallen and Gavin Adcock set the bar pretty low for party boy behaviour, Thomas Edwards feels like a less lairy, more thoughtful and sensitive alternative.

'Drunk Enough' is out now on Warner Music Nashville

Listen If You Like: ERNEST, Hailey Whitters, Lauren Watkins

If you're ever worried that you're not where you wanted to be by this point in your life, then Josie Sal is about to make you feel a hell of a lot worse.

By age eleven, the singer from Pittsburgh, PA, had already shared the stage with stars like Lainey Wilson and Jelly Roll and opened for country icons such as Riley Green and Aaron Tippin. Having recently opened up Justin Moore and Mitchell Tenpenny and with a Gavin Adcock support slot in for November, the 13-year-old country singer songwriter is proving that age really is just a number.

Like Tanya Tucker and Taylor Swift before her, Josie Sal's age is only interesting because it's so surprising. If no one had told you, you would never know, because on record she sounds as fired up and full of fight as Ashley McBryde or Miranda Lambert or any of the other women of country rock.

Recent singles, 'Fake Friends' and 'Redneck Weekend,' belie her age with an explosive, hi-NRG sound that makes Lainey Wilson look like a ukulele plucking puppy. This is the kind of fiery country rock that makes you want to punch the air and put your foot through the floorboards. Fierce and loud and unapologetic, Josie Sal is the Gretchen Wilson of the eighth grade.

Citing Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Beach Boys, Big and Rich and Billy Joel among her influences, at just ten years old, Josie Sal took a dare from her father to sing in front of a crowd in Florida, which sparked a passion for music that quickly turned into a career. Her young age is only interesting because it's surprising.

"My love for country music was from my grandpa who always had legends like Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, and more playing," Josie Sal says, "and my love for all kinds of music came from my brother John. Growing up around both of them inspired me to tell stories through my songs. I will include my sister Helena and brother Jimmy for inspiration to many songs. Watching the different relationships and life experiences they’ve gone through has helped me write songs that are real and relatable."

'Redneck Weekend' is available now

Listen If You Like: Miranda Lambert, Lainey Wilson, Meghan Patrick

Based in Central Virginia and with family roots in South Texas, Ramona and the Holy Smokes are part of a new wave of classic country revisiting and reworking the old timey sound of traditional country but adding just enough contemporary touches to make it feel entirely modern.

“There is definitely something modern about our sound," lead singer Ramona Martinez. "I don't know if I can pinpoint exactly what it is, but what I do know is that even those who claim to not like country music can connect with us. Perhaps that's because country music, done right, is sincere. And I think everyone can connect with music that's sincere."

Their hard driving honky tonk sound might be inspired by the music blasting out of Nashville's bars in the '50s and '60s, but they've got a reckless cowpunk spirit that gives them their edge with a repertoire that includes lush countrypolitan ballads, perky two-steps, twangy country rock and a unique blend of honky tonk and traditional Mexican styles that the group describes as “Mexi-tonk" due to the Mexican-American heritage of lead singer and songwriter Ramona Martinez.

"I grew up all over the world because my parents worked for the government," Ramona Martinez says. "But I am from Virginia and have lived in Charlottesville for 10 years. I loved bluegrass when I was in college, and that introduced me to classic country artists like Hank Williams. My Dad is from Corpus Christi, Texas, and I like to think there's a little Texas in our sound as well."

Formed in 2022, Ramona and the Holy Smokes road tested their sound opening for everyone from Margo Cilker and Willi Carlisle to Joshua Hedley and Kashus Culpepper, and released their hilariously titled debut single 'I Honky Tonked Too Hard Last Night' in 2023 followed by a four-song EP in 2024. Now, with their self-titled debut album just around the corner, recorded at Spacebomb Studios in Richmond, Virginia, and produced by Kai Crowe-Getty and guitarist Kyle Kilduff, it feels like the right band are firmly in the right place at the right time.

Describing her influences as "A little bit of everything," band leader Martinez picks out The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Billie Holiday and Bruce Springsteen as some of her favourites.

"Wow, lots of 'B' bands," she notes laughing. "I haven't even mentioned Britney and Backstreet Boys. We'll end with my ultimate faves as a teen: The Magnetic Fields."

The experimental NY indie pop project might seem like an unlikely touchpoint for a honky tonk band, but it's one that explains that feeling you get listening to Ramona and the Holy Smokes. The history of country music has often been written by the outsiders, the misfts and the outliers. Whether it was Waylon and Willie, Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons or more recently Sierra Ferrell and Margo Price, it's always been pushed forward by somebody coming from outside of it, trying to get back to something and getting lost, and Ramona and the Holy Smokes are having a lot of fun finding their way.

'Gonna Be Mine' is out everywhere now. Their self-titled debut is released on 26 September.

Listen If You Like: Emily Nenni, Margo Price, Brennen Leigh

Hailing from Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, a historic, coal-mining region at the base of the Appalachian Mountains, Max Alan's musical journey began when he was writing poems in high school to win scholarships to fund his pursuit of a college education, and it's that

"I got my start writing poems when I was in high school, not telling anybody about it," he says, admitting he was afraid of being judged by his classmates. "The majority of my hometown is a working class crowd, some people who may seem a little rough around the edges, but have really big hearts."

It's Max Alan's own big heart that defines his raw, heartfelt, guitar-heavy Americana. Driven by his poetic sensibility and his vulnerable, unflinchingly honest lyrics, the home recordings that made up his debut album, Appalachian Lullaby, released last year hinted at him being one to look out for, but it was his last three singles from 2025, released on Evan Honer's Cloverdale label, that really began to put him on the map.

"I grew up listening to a wide variety of music," he says about his musical schooling. "As a young kid, I can remember listening to Alan Jackson, and Joe Diffie in my paps' truck. When I turned 11 or 12 years old, I wanted a guitar for my birthday, I wanted to be a rockstar. I was listening to a lot of Pearl Jam, Green Day, and Alice In Chains. It was right before going to college I was introduced to Jason Isbell, Turnpike Troubadours, Sturgill Simpson, and Tyler Childers. Those are the years that I was truly inspired to write the best music I could."

You can pick out all those influences in the impassioned delivery of recent singles 'Lucy Dear,' 'Sky Blue,' and 'Watching Windmills.' It's like he has a lifetime of feelings stored up in him just waiting to burst out, and those exploded feelings are already beginning to resonate with a wider audience.

"Recently I have gotten some messages saying how much my music has helped people in tough times in their life," he shared. "So honestly, I hope to just continue doing that and see where it takes me. I hope I can continue to be a light for those who need it. "

'Watching Windmills' is out now on Cloverdale Records

Listen If You Like: Tyler Childers, Cole Chaney, Ryan Bingham

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: