> Hinterland: New Americana – feature updates every Thursday
listen to the article
Eric Alexandrakis – One More Angel [A Tribute To Raul Malo]
Eric Alexandrakis Turns Grief Into A Celebration Of Raul Malo
Eric Alexandrakis treats “One More Angel” like a candle lit in a crowded room: intimate, steady, and impossible to ignore. A tribute to Raul Malo, the track folds three decades of friendship, Miami history, and Alexandrakis’ own battles with cancer into something that feels less like mourning than gratitude. He leans into Malo’s legacy the right way, letting the song breathe with fiddle, accordion, harp, and a singer’s instinct for lift over lament. The result recalls the heart of The Mavericks at their most openhearted — country, pop, and old-soul ache moving in the same frame.
With Paul David Hager’s mix smoothing the edges, Alexandrakis turns a simple three-chord song into a living memorial. The limited 500-copy vinyl edition, with proceeds going to the American Cancer Society, deepens the gesture: this is remembrance with purpose, not posture.
Soul Zimon & His Kozmic Combinations – Wild River Rose
A Cabin-Born Folk Blues That Refuses To Polished-Over Its Soul
Soul Zimon & His Kozmic Combinations sound pulled from timber, dust, and an older musical tradition. On “Wild River Rose,” the Oslo-based, Dalarna-rooted collective settles into rustic folk-blues and outlaw-country territory, with traces of Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash at the edges. Recorded in the cabin where the brothers grew up, the track was captured with an SM57, an AKG C414, Logic, and just four takes, leaving the performance exposed and immediate.
That sparseness suits a song centred on memory, mortality, and the dignity of hard work. Rather than smoothing away its rough edges, the band lets them carry the story. “Wild River Rose” feels intimate and weathered, preserving the sense of place, history, and lived experience that shaped it.
J. Killen – Oak Tree
J. Killen Lets Grief Settle Beneath The “Oak Tree”
J. Killen’s “Oak Tree” carries the hush of a country hymn at dusk: spacious, weathered, and unhurried. Loping drums, pedal steel, and a worn-in vocal place the track between classic Americana and the bruised melancholy of Wilco or Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, while keeping its emotional focus close.
Written after the deaths of Killen’s grandmother and a close friend, the song approaches grief through acceptance rather than grand release. Its plainspoken writing folds mortality into a promise not to leave loved ones carrying unnecessary weight. That restraint gives “Oak Tree” its gravity. For an artist who has rebuilt his life far from the instability of touring and addiction, the song feels less concerned with redemption as an idea than with the quieter work of living it.
Nancy Carey Johnson – Shine Your Light
Nancy Carey Johnson Finds Grace In The Grain Of Everyday Life
With Shine Your Light, Nancy Carey Johnson leans into the kind of songwriting that doesn’t need to shout to land. The four-song EP folds Americana, folk, and classic singer-songwriter craft into something warm, patient, and quietly sure-footed, from the sly pulse of “Guano Loco” to the title track’s steady glow. Across “She Let Him Go” and “Take Me To The River,” she writes like someone who knows the weight of ordinary days and the lift that can still break through them.
Johnson’s voice carries the lived-in ease of a Vermont homesteader and the precision of a writer who has learned how to say more with less. After Chaos & Grace and the national recognition of “Birthday Cake For Breakfast,” this release feels like a deeper settling-in: less about proving range than trusting resonance. It’s music rooted in real life, and that’s exactly why it stays with you.
Reece Sullivan – To Tir na nOg
Reece Sullivan Wanders Into Celtic Myth On “To Tir na nOg”
Reece Sullivan’s “To Tir na nOg” reaches into Celtic mythology without losing its human footing. Inspired by Tír na nÓg, the legendary land beyond age and illness, the song folds myth, memory, and a touch of mischief into a folk framework shaped by Sullivan’s long fascination with W.B. Yeats and Ireland’s faerie-haunted imagination. The writing carries a literary bent, but never feels sealed behind glass; legend becomes something conversational, strange, and close at hand.
Originally from Arkansas and now based in Lafayette, Louisiana, Sullivan has spent years moving between piano, guitar, classical composition, art rock, and folk. That restless musical history gives the track its slightly off-centre character. As part of SWAN SONG, “To Tir na nOg” reflects an artist drawn to old stories not as relics, but as material still capable of being reshaped.
If you would like to submit your music for playlist or feature consideration, please submit here via our partnership with MusoSoup.
