Katie Pruitt

Less than a decade into her career, Katie Pruitt has cemented her status as an essential artist who helps us make sense of modern life and uncover meaningful ways of moving through it. Since the arrival of her critically celebrated full-debut Expectations (a 2020 LP that earned her an Emerging Artist of the Year nomination from the Americana Music Association), the Georgia-bred singer/songwriter/guitarist has assembled an acclaimed body of work exploring questions both existential and intimate (e.g., identity, self-acceptance, the quiet courage of living truthfully). On her new album Fools for the Fleeting, the Nashville-based musician reckons with the impermanence inherent to being human, shifting between poetic observation and confessional storytelling as she confronts such complex matters as ecological anxiety, love’s intrinsic fragility, and the profound isolation normalized by our increasingly digitized existence.

Her third full-length and follow-up to 2024’s Mantras, Fools for the Fleeting emerged from Pruitt’s vision of creating an album that feels “rooted to the earth”—a concept closely tied to the LP’s underlying theme of nature as a mirror for our inner lives. A prime showcase for her warm and soulful voice, the 10-song set centers on a powerful yet intentional form of Americana/indie-rock, steeped in acoustic instrumentation and the beautifully imperfect friction of live performance, courtesy of musicians like Juan Solorzano (a guitarist known for his work with Ruston Kelly and Parker Millsap) and Aksel Coe (a drummer who’s played with Ella Langley and Sierra Ferrell). As Pruitt’s most outward-reaching and philosophically rich work to date, the result is a luminous meditation on transience and grief, connection as survival, and the transformative power of presence and surrender.

Judy Blank

If Judy Blank would tell you she grew up in a beach town in Southern California, you’d probably believe her. But nothing could be further from the truth. Hailing from Utrecht, The Netherlands, the blue-eyed indie folk sensation has been known for an eclectic sound. Her music lands somewhere in the realm of ‘60’s girl group meets indie/garage rock, never losing the intimacy of a singer-songwriter. Whether she’s grooving with her band in a dark bar in Los Angeles, or in a quiet theater with nothing but a guitar, she’s certain to draw you in with her whimsical tunes, magnetic stage presence & painfully relatable lyrics.

As a kid, she spent every night of the week watching classic American movies with her dad. Inspired by their storytelling and captivating soundtracks, she always dreamed of crossing the Atlantic to embark on her own heroine's journey: pursuing her career as an artist in the United States. When she was nineteen, she bought a cheap plane ticket to New Orleans, where she started playing her first shows in local bars & coffee houses. Shortly after, she made her way to Nashville, where she recorded her 70’s inspired coming-of-age LP ‘Morning Sun’. From the green-eyed soul of her hit single ‘Mary Jane’ to the jagged-edged ballad ‘Tangled Up in You’, which currently has over twelve million streams on Spotify, her album checked all the boxes. Lead single ‘1995’ was even called a favorite by none other than one of her favorite artists: Sir Elton John. The release of ‘Morning Sun’ not only put her on the map in Europe, where she sold out clubs as a headliner and got to open for artists like Langhorne Slim, The Wood Brothers and SUSTO, but also in the States. She officially debuted at SXSW in Austin in 2019 and was the first Dutch artist to ever play AmericanaFest in Nashville that same year.

But in every heroine’s journey, the protagonist needs to experience internal conflict in order to grow. Her most recent EP, ‘Saddies’, has added a whole new layer of vulnerability to her artistry; she produced it herself after experiencing an unexpected mental breakdown. Each song describes a relatable struggle and encapsulates it in its own universe, with a hint of self-mockery and plenty of party favors.