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How would you define The Wild Feathers? Some may immediately check a box for Americana – and they wouldn’t be wrong. Others may lean on a version of rock: Country-rock, folk-rock, heartland rock. They’d all be right, too. Blues? A Southern flare? Occasional punk attitude? It’s all in there. Now, it’s time to hop on the bus and sing along.

The longtime Nashville band returns this year with Sirens, a new LP of road-worn, sharply-woven tales chronicling a life worth living, love worth holding and the hard-earned lessons found along the ride. To cut the follow-up to 2021 album Alvarado – the band’s debut on independent label New West Records – The Wild Feathers decamped from Music City, U.S.A., to Los Angeles for sessions with producer Shooter Jennings (known for his work with Brandi Carlile, Turnpike Troubadours and Tanya Tucker, among others) at Dave’s Room in North Hollywood.

Listen intently and without genre in mind. Because when the so-called Sirens make their sound on this new album, don’t worry about how to define it. Just enjoy the ride.

How would you define The Wild Feathers? Some may immediately check a box for Americana – and they wouldn’t be wrong. Others may lean on a version of rock: Country-rock, folk-rock, heartland rock. They’d all be right, too. Blues? A Southern flare? Occasional punk attitude? It’s all in there. Now, it’s time to hop on the bus and sing along.

The longtime Nashville band returns this year with Sirens, a new LP of road-worn, sharply-woven tales chronicling a life worth living, love worth holding and the hard-earned lessons found along the ride. To cut the follow-up to 2021 album Alvarado – the band’s debut on independent label New West Records – The Wild Feathers decamped from Music City, U.S.A., to Los Angeles for sessions with producer Shooter Jennings (known for his work with Brandi Carlile, Turnpike Troubadours and Tanya Tucker, among others) at Dave’s Room in North Hollywood.

Listen intently and without genre in mind. Because when the so-called Sirens make their sound on this new album, don’t worry about how to define it. Just enjoy the ride.

A very rare jewel in the Michael Head canon of work. A two-song project recorded in 2014, pressed in France and packaged in a hand-made sleeve. This is a unique and original artefact, not a re-press. With no band name on the sleeve , this was a personal project exquisitely packaged.

Born in 1989 in Bamako, Mali, Nfaly Diakité is a member of the Donsow, Bambara animist hunters from the Mandé region. Tribute to Toumani Koné' is Nfaly Diakité's first solo album, recorded in Bamako in June 2020. With this album, Nfaly wishes to pay tribute to the storyteller and poet Toumani Koné, who throughout his long career as a Donso has been a symbol of courage and honesty. The nine tracks on this solo album leave no room for hesitation. Three instruments (donso ngoni, voice and keregne) transport us into another dimension without ever tiring us. The rhythm is accurate and precise, creating a deep, melodious trance. All the power of a music that belongs not to a single musician, but to a long cultural tradition of which he is the spokesman, is expressed here. The young Nfaly alone succeeds in drawing us into this world without feeling the weight of tradition, only the liberation of a music that sounds all the more contemporary. This album is to be listened to in its entirety as one tight journey between repeated formulas, highlights and moments of rest within the same relentless rhythm.

In 2014, while in Tel Aviv to play a solo show, Rudi Protrudi was taken into a studio to cut an acoustic solo album - just him and his guitar. Since then the tracks have been sitting on the shelf - until, that is, Rudi decided to take them into a Berlin studio and add additional instrumentation to some of the tracks. The track selection reflects a good portion of songs he had included in his live set, a diverse sampling of blues, country, and folk.

Why you'll love it...
Following the massive success of her 2017 album Highway Queen, Nikki Lane was uncertain whether she wanted to make another album. Exhausted from touring, she spent time at home and was happy lending support to fellow artists like Sierra Ferrell, Lana Del Rey and Spiritualized.

‘’I hadn’t made a record in years and did not really feel interested in making another one,'' she shared. ''What I realized was how many little nuggets I was sitting on.''

Connecting with Queens of the Stone Age frontman Joshua Homme, Lane entered the studio for her next album. With talent on the album like Queens of the Stone Age collaborators Alain Johannes (guitar), Dean Fertita (organ), Michael Shuman (bass), Matt Helders of Arctic Monkeys (drums), Carla Azar of Autolux (drums) and Matt Pynn (steel player), Denim & Diamonds marks Lane's massive return.

Limited to 1,000 copies, the VMP exclusive edition of Denim & Diamonds is pressed on 1LP Seaglass vinyl at United Record Pressing. The album will arrive in a single direct-to-board, foil stamped and numbered jacket along with an 11x22 poster. The album is mastered by Gavin Lurssen of Lurssen Mastering.

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Why you'll love it...
“The moment country music was born, it started dying — at least according to a particular substrate of purists. For decades, they have dug in their heels for fiddle, for mandolin, for harmonies. Every so often, they get a win, pulling the rope over to their side in the endless tug-of-war between country music that incorporates the pop trends of the day (for both creative and commercial reasons), and country music that prioritizes mining the music’s widely mythologized tradition.

Marty Stuart was one of those artists. On 1982’s Busy Bee Cafe, the singer and mandolin player flaunted his real country bona fides via both his prodigious picking and the gaudy talent among the album’s personnel — earned in the course of a career that had already, apocryphally, lasted a decade in spite of the fact that Stuart was just 24 years old when the album was released. Far from being an appetizer to Stuart’s eventual commercial success, Busy Bee instead showcases his deep reverence for his musical forebears, radio playability be damned. The folksy release falls in line with a persistent strain of traditionalism even more than it does the commerce-minded revivals of Strait and Skaggs — a strain that endures today, fueled in part by inspiring performances like those captured on this album.”

Why you'll love it...
Kris Kristofferson was the true country outsider, a man who single-handedly pushed the genre leftward, changing forever the perception of its songwriters, its performers and its message. He was long-haired, anti-war and sang songs with drug use, sex and violence always lurking as dangers in the margins, at a time when Waylon and Willie were wearing sweaters and playing golf on their album covers. He was the outlaw, in a genre that would soon have people recording his songs, and co-opting his vision for a new version of country, to much greater financial success.

Why you'll love it...
Infamous Angel is the stunning debut from country singer-songwriter Iris DeMent, and the VMP Country Record of the Month for January 2022. It’s pressed on exclusive 180g Cloudy Blue vinyl.

Why you'll love it...
Amelia Meath and Alexandra Sauser-Monning have been sharing the stage for upwards of fifteen years; they have now come together for a new band called The A's. Their debut album, Fruit, shares a beautiful ten-song collection that features covers of folk songs, lullabies, ballads and more. The album includes their rendition of “He Needs Me,” the Harry Nilsson and Shelley Duvall classic from 1980’s Popeye along with standouts like the ballads “Swing and Turn Jubilee,” “Copper Kettle,” “Buckeye Jim” and others. Fruit is a glimpse a deep collaboration and friendship between the two artists and bandmates.

Limited to 400 copies, the VMP exclusive edition of The A's Fruit is pressed on 1LP Banana Yellow vinyl at Citizen Vinyl. The album will arrive in gatefold direct-to-board, hand-numbered jacket. It's mastered by Patricia Sullivan of Bernie Grundman Mastering.

Why you'll love it...
High Top Mountain certainly leaned traditional, but it also set the precedent that Simpson was not an artist content to coast, was not someone just trying to write the easiest song to ride to the top. He was willing to put in the work, and hire $25,000 worth of studio time and band members to make his vision a reality, and didn’t very much care what happened next. Only that he’d done it. Freedom, as a famous country singer once wrote for Janis Joplin, is just another word for nothing left to lose. The most free performer we’ve had these last 10 years is Simpson, who took a trip to High Top Mountain and never came back down.

Why you'll love it...
Richard Thompson's Music from Grizzly Man accompanies the acclaimed documentary, Grizzly Man, following the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, a documentary filmmaker, environmentalist and bear enthusiast.

This VMP exclusive record is pressed on 1LP standard weight Smoke vinyl at Independent Record Pressing. This reissue is remastered by Bob Olhsson. Limited to 1,000 copies, Music from Grizzly Man will arrive in a foil stamped and numbered gatefold tip-on jacket.

Why you'll love it...
Lessons for Mutants marks a shift in Johanna Warren's art and life, from the constant touring, the pandemic and moving to rural Wales. The album began with the same sessions that spawned her previous work, Chaotic Good, and continued into the UK as she was surrounded by a landscape of sheep, cows and plants. The album reflects a theme of metamorphosis in these moments of change for the artist.

Limited to 300 copies, the VMP exclusive edition of Johanna Warren's Lessons for Mutants is pressed on 1LP recycled vinyl at Optimal Media Production, mastered by Sarah Register. The record will arrive in a single direct-to-board, hand numbered jacket along with a download code.

Why you'll love it...
Kentucky-based folk musician Joan Shelley returns to No Quarter Records with her newest album, The Spur. The album was written between the fall of 2019 and 2020 during the peak of isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and recorded the following spring of 2021 while Shelley was pregnant. Shortly afterwards, Shelley married her long-time musical partner and now-husband Nathan Salsburg.

Of the album, Shelley said, ‘’The Spur is the result of a period of opposite extremes: of intellectual hyper-connection and physical isolation. This album will forever be fused with the memory of our marriage, the birth of our child, and the intense joy despite the darkness.''

The record is co-produced by both Joan Shelley and James Elkington, and features Bill Callahan, Meg Baird, British novelist Max Porter and Nathan Salsburg.

The VMP exclusive edition of The Spur will arrive on a 1LP Silver Fox vinyl in a single direct-to-board foil stamped and numbered jacket with a printed inner sleeve. It's mastered by Josh Bonati of Bonati Mastering.

Why you'll love it...
Sound-wise, 1971’s Willie Nelson & Family is no different than the 11 studio albums that precede it: They are awash in the Countrypolitan sound, with strings, horns and backing singers. But the version of ‘’Sunday Mornin,'' complete with its guitar solo — one of the first on Nelson’s legendary Trigger guitar — feels like the first act of defiance and a statement of intent. ‘’If Kris Kristofferson can do this, I can do it too,'' Nelson seemed to be saying. Within 18 months, he’d be in New York making Shotgun Willie, free to follow his muse wherever he went, cementing Kristofferson’s outlaw country jumpoff point. And that’s why Willie Nelson & Family is such an interesting artifact: It’s the last album Willie made in his ‘’Before'' timeline; it’s the point where he started putting it all together and asserting his creative ideas in tangible ways.

Why you'll love it...
Willie Nelson wants it known, despite being divorced twice and married thrice before writing the album — including one that was spurred by his second wife finding a maternity ward bill from his eventual third — that Phases and Stages is and was not autobiographical. “The overall theme was not a reflection of my own life,” he said in his 2015 biography It’s A Long Story: My Life. “I was simply making up a story. Sure, I’d gone through breakups and heartaches of my own. What human soul hasn’t?” But when you make an album like Phases and Stages, the most devastating, humanistic divorce record of all time — and be beaten by an ex-wife after she sews you into your sheets — people begin to believe the album is about you and your ex-wives.

Why you'll love it...
“On Honky Tonk Heroes, Waylon Jennings had no one else to answer to, and the joyful mess of the album testifies to the kind of magic that can happen when you finally cut a lifelong misfit loose.
Honky Tonk Heroes isn’t Jennings’ first great album, but it was the first that captured his wild-hair energy instead of attempting to tame it. It belonged completely to him. It was so liberating that it would unleash a series of triumphs. This is the birthplace of the iconic 1970s Waylon, the one who would go on to slalom across the rest of the decade on a series of increasingly brilliant albums and mountains of cocaine. Waylon Jennings transformed himself into the Waylon, the leader of a movement forever altering the perception of country music in America.”

Why you'll love it...
“Knowing Tammy Wynette’s troubled history, and with 50-plus years of social change since the recording and release of Stand By Your Man, it’s difficult to hear the album and not want to scream: Tammy, get out of there; you’re so much better than him! But that’s not to say that the album, which ascended to No. 2 on Billboard’s Country Albums chart and earned a Country Music Association Album of the Year nomination in 1969, isn’t worth listening to. Wynette’s mournful voice, described by her longtime producer Billy Sherrill as ‘husky and soulful and tearful and dynamic,’ was made for songs like these; frankly, so were her real-life experiences. ‘She lived it, you know. She lived every tear every-body ever heard her sing,’ Sherrill once said of Wynette, and he assembled talented musicians to match her delivery in lush, Nashville Sound-era style.”

Why you'll love it...
Restless, the certified platinum fourth studio album from singer Sara Evans, celebrates it's 20th anniversary. The early 2000's hit includes "Backseat of a Greyhound Bus," "Perfect," "Suds in the Bucket" and "Tonight."
The VMP exclusive version of Sara Evans' Restless is pressed on Fruit Punch vinyl at Memphis Record Pressing (MRP). The 2LPs will arrive in a widespine, direct-to-board and foil-stamped jacket.

Why you'll love it...
Much of Montevallo was deceptive in its simplicity, hiding era-defining songwriting talent and a whole new mode of country crossover behind a seemingly easy-to-replicate formula of marrying traditional country instruments with programmed beats and slick, dynamic melodies. Its velvet revolution won Hunt years of radio dominance and anticipated a tidal wave of what’s been termed “boyfriend country” — legions of imitators who took the singer’s gently flirtatious tack and R&B influences to their cloying extremes. Plenty in Nashville didn’t see Montevallo as a changing of the guard, and even after he’d become a country megastar wrote him off as either a novelty, insufficiently capital-C Country, or both. When confronted with resistance about his own mode of widening country music’s lens Hunt has tended to return to the root of the issue, which runs much deeper than a simple disdain for pop music in country or concern about preserving some of its imagined “authentic” past.

Why you'll love it...
The conventional way of talking about The Houston Kid, Rodney Crowell’s 2001 release and the greatest achievement of his 50-year career, is autobiographically. From this way of thinking, the album pretty straightforwardly looks at Crowell’s life growing up in the poor, white working-class parts of Houston, Texas in the 1950s and 1960s, the only child of J.W. and Addie Cauzette Crowell’s tempestuous, dysfunctional union. Hearing The Houston Kid this way isn’t wrong, of course, but it is incomplete.

For starters, if it’s Crowell’s actual life story we’re after, we’d be better off reading Chinaberry Sidewalks: A Memoir, the book project he began around the same time but didn’t publish until 2011. For another thing, The Houston Kid’s details and effects are autobiographically inspired, sure, but also rife with exaggerations, omissions and flat-out fictions. You know, art.

Why you'll love it...
As a Nashville resident, Natalie Hemby has graced stages as a country singer and songwriter since she was 19. Fully immersed in the music scene, Hemby has since written songs for numerous artists and has appeared on the writing credits for artists such as Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert, Keith Urban, Blake Shelton, Lady Gaga and a score of other artists. Hemby won two Grammy Awards, including one for Best Song Written for Visual Media for the Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper film A Star Is Born.

In 2019, she joined Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris and Amanda Shires to create the quartet The Highwomen, with whom she released her second album. Pins and Needles sees Hemby’s return to a solo album, fully flaunting her singing and songwriting capabilities to the forefront for her latest imaginative, soul-touching album.

Why you'll love it...
"Miranda Lambert possesses this specific Cool Girl archetype’s enviable quality of being able to be open, honest and vulnerable, while never revealing anything that might give someone leverage over her. She is prickly and sweet, cool and commercial, writes songs that are exceptional and accessible. She’s a songwriter and an entertainer, a country star and a rock star. She isn’t as pop as many of her contemporaries, but she’s not whittling-and-loom-weaving Americana, either. These are tightropes she’s always walked, and still walks. Revolution is the moment she found her balance."

Why you'll love it...
‘’Loretta Lynn had started working on her 25th studio LP, Back to the Country, in 1972. Its eventual opening track, ‘’The Pill,'' was a song about the birth control pill and the freedoms it could give a woman from — but not limited to — a philandering husband. At first, it was put in Lynn’s back pocket after a recording session when the label deemed it too controversial to release. The label was right, of course. It was controversial. But they were wrong about the consequences of releasing a song so polarizing. Though radio stations across the country banned ‘’The Pill,'' that only made it more alluring to fans who helped boost its sales, making it one of her biggest sellers of all time. Lynn may not have been close to being one of the “outlaw” musicians of the late ’60s — not decked in leather nor caught smoking weed with Willie Nelson — but you could easily argue she was among the most outlaw of them all.''

Why you'll love it...
Joshua Hedley's sophomore album goes forward in time from his debut's 1950s and '60s country ballads. Neon Blue explores the early 1990s territory of country while still having Hedley's modern flare.

Hedley said, “The last bastion of country music was the early 1990s, roughly 1989 through 1996. You could turn on the radio and immediately know you’re hearing a country song. You could still hear steel guitar and fiddle. But there was a hard fork around 1996 or ‘97, when country veered off into pop territory. Neon Blue asks, 'What if that fork never happened? What if country kept on sounding like country?'”

The album is co-produced by Jordan Lehning and Skylar Wilson, and mixed by Kyle Lehning.

Why you'll love it...
"Remembrances of ’90s country largely reduce the genre to the twin pillars of Garth and Shania, with a wholesale writing-off of the artists who made the genre as commercially successful as pop in the early-to-mid ’90s. And while it might not be the most beloved period among country connoisseurs — the 2010s and the ’70s seem to be the ordained decades — the era’s artists are worthy of reappraisal, its albums way more charming and enduring than they’ve been given credit for. John Michael Montgomery is a symbol of an era, but it’s also 10 songs of earnest, open and, most importantly, fun country music that you can absolutely love like that."

Why you'll love it...
Ocean Front Property, the 1987 multi-Platinum smash-hit from George Strait, is the VMP Country Record of the Month in December 2022. Celebrating the record's 35th anniversary, our edition is pressed on 180g "Am I Blue" colored vinyl with lacquers cut...

Why you'll love it...
'Groover's Paradise' is the third studio album from Doug Sahm, and the VMP Country Record of the Month for April 2022. It's here on AAA 180g "Texas Sunshine" colored vinyl, with lacquers cut from the original master tapes by Ryan Smith of Sterling Sound.

Why you'll love it...
What’s most apparent, though, across Coat of Many Colors — through the pain, the work, the heartbreak and even the cruelty — is Parton’s complete, undying adoration for life and the people in it. “Early Morning Breeze,” a track that subtly veers into psychedelic folk, is a spiritual meditation that observes and appreciates the simplicity of an early morning walk through a meadow and a moment of prayer. Album closer “A Better Place To Live” takes time to imagine what an actively kinder world would look like. Bold and brilliant “Here I Am,” in retrospect, serves as a much more definitive, and more fitting, introduction to her self-driven rise than a simple “Hello, I’m Dolly.” Sung almost exclusively in Dolly’s unhinged all-out belt, the song’s a pipe-showcasing testament to the simple power of showing up: lending a hand, offering an understanding ear, knowing how much love you’ve got to give and shelling it out indiscriminately.