For our CD, given away free with the February 2026 issue of Uncut, we’ve detoured our long-standing Sounds Of The New West series deep into the heart of the Big Easy. In rich musical pockets like New Orleans’ historic Ninth Ward district, fresh gumbo is being concocted by an emerging generation of artists – including Alex Pianovich’s Greazy Alice, who are also interviewed in the new issue.
For our CD, given away free with the February 2026 issue of Uncut, we’ve detoured our long-standing Sounds Of The New West series deep into the heart of the Big Easy. In rich musical pockets like New Orleans’ historic Ninth Ward district, fresh gumbo is being concocted by an emerging generation of artists – including Alex Pianovich’s Greazy Alice, who are also interviewed in the new issue.
Stand by, then, for the freshest cuts direct from the Crescent City – “bottom shelf country music”, stellar boogie, raucous rock’n’roll and swampy psychedelia.
1 Greazy Alice
Turn
Our survey of the finest current New Orleans sounds kicks off with a track by the fine Greazy Alice. Otherwise known as Alex Pianovich, he helped to compile this CD with his expert knowledge of the Big Easy as it is right now. This is one of the highlights of his excellent album, As Time Goes By.
2 Chris Acker
Wouldn’t Do For You (Buddy)
Acker’s fourth album, Famous Lunch, appeared in late 2024 and found the Louisiana native writing imagistic, honest and deeply funny songs like this, backed by his group The Growing Boys. Conjured up on the road and at a Montana residency, the 10 tracks on Famous Lunch are a testament to Acker’s talents.
3 Silver Synthetic
Yr Gonna Be Happy
The second track on March 2025’s Rosalie LP, this showcases Silver Synthetic’s glammy brand of country-rock. There are elements of the Paisley Underground, Beachwood Sparks, Rose City Band and even jazzy touches, but the group are largely laying out their own path with stellar boogie like this.
4 Sabine McCalla
Two Of Hearts
Sister of Layla McCalla, and an artist who’s made New Orleans their home, Sabine McCalla just released her debut full-length, Don’t Call Me Baby, at the end of 2025. Like “Two Of Hearts”, it’s a novel mix of Americana, gospel, pre-war styles and rock’n’roll, all tied together with McCalla’s unique voice.
5 Whip Appeal
No Cowboys in Texas
James Cobb and Lily Fein wryly call their music ‘punch-bowl rock’n’roll’ and ‘bottom shelf country music’, but the songs on their records – including 2024’s Shimmering Seed, which includes this song – are raucous, clever Americana, like Palace Brothers and Silver Jews cutting loose in a Nashville dive.
6 Chris Lyons
When Are You Coming Down
When he’s not fronting Silver Synthetic, Lyons makes his own music. Painters Street, released in late 2025, is a quietly stunning effort, capturing a stumbling, rumpled group live in the studio much like Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night. Gone is the showiness of Silver Synthetic, and much of their energy; that space is filled with raw emotion instead.
7 Anna Moss
Slow Down Kamikaze
Singer-songwriter Moss doesn’t hail from the Crescent City originally, but from the legendary Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. The folk music she developed there is mixed with spacey, experimental R&B on her striking albums such as 2024’s Amnesty; this song, for instance, wonderfully mingles her soulful vocals with flute and crisp slow-funk percussion.
8 Burnt Sugar
Disguise
Spencer Nessel helms New Orlean’s Burnt Sugar, a predominantly new wave and chamber-pop group, a little Lemon Twigs, a little Cardinal. Their 2023 single “Disguise”, though, adds some great honky-tonk fiddle, the feel of the Big Easy and the Mississippi inevitably seeping through.
9 Thomas Dollbaum
Warlock’s House
A poet and songwriter, Dollbaum is on the up thanks to his tender, atmospheric Drive All Night mini-album. “Warlock’s House” is his finest work so far, presenting him as a modern Jeff Buckley soaked in Southern Gothic and Americana. With a new LP ready to go, watch this space.
10 The Deslondes
Grand Junction
Sam Doores and his group have been New Orleans staples for a good few years now – with Doores also a solo artist and sometime member of Hurray For The Riff Raff, formerly a New Orleans group themselves – and 2024’s Roll It Out, co-produced by the great Andrija Tokic, is one of their best records so far.
11 Jackson And The Janks
Let’s Leave Here
Jackson Lynch is now resident in Brooklyn, but his group started in New Orleans and practically bleed the classic Big Easy sound. Write It Down, released in 2025 and featuring this cut, is a raucous rock’n’roll hoedown complete with honking sax, something like The White Stripes if they’d been into juke-joint swing rather than garage-rock and blues.
12 The Lostines
No Mama Blues
Sam Doores is also involved with this duo of stellar singers and songwriters, Casey Jane Reece-Kaigler and Camille Wind Weatherford, who play old-style country and ballads, dripping with melancholy. The big draw here are their harmonies, evoking the Everlys and the finest vintage duets.
13 Bruisey Peets
True At Once
Ben Usie is a Lousiana-born songwriter who moved away and then returned to make his own brand of swampy psychedelic pop as Bruisey Peets. “True At Once” is taken from his 2025 EP “Cartwheel Clown”, theatrical and eclectic like a Delta Flaming Lips.
14 Abby And The Arsonists
Carmela
Last year’s Caterpillars In The Walls is the latest LP from this New Orleans garage-rock outfit led by Abby Lewis. Raging and tongue-in-cheek all at once, it’s a call to a certain fictional gangster’s wife, pleading for her to see his murderous, cheating ways and act accordingly.
15 Maddy Kirgo
Stranger Over Me
After busking in the Crescent City and trying to start a honky-tonk band, Kirgo fell into classic country songwriting and subsequently made 2024’s Shadow On My Light, her first full release. This track mixes elegiac craft with more modern production and arrangements, slide guitar melting into synths.
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