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5 days ago · Most divisive: Basia Bulat. Over 7.9K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of The Best Indie Folk Bands & Artists. For years, folk music was not popular. However, during the 2000s, the subgenre indie folk began gradually building a captive audience among music listeners.
May 20, 2020 · Here are the 100 Best Indie Folk Albums of All Time: 100. Stornoway: Beachcomber’s Windowsill (2010) With bouncy bass lines and bright vocals, British chamber-pop quartet Stornoway recalls all...
- Nick Drake – Pink Moon (1972) Nick Drake’s final album is also his simplest and most grave. Describing this album as “solo acoustic” overlooks the painful extreme to which he stretched the limits of the guitar: string noise and hard plucking on tracks like “Road” and “Know” create a droning, dirge-like atmosphere.
- Daniel Johnston – Yip/Jump Music (1983) Plenty of narratives—some fair, some unbelievably cynical—have been spun about Daniel Johnston’s short life. His fifth album, recorded in a Texas garage with just a chord organ and Johnston’s lonesome voice, is the gold standard for “outsider” music, but that label now seems inaccurate.
- Robyn Hitchcock – I Often Dream of Trains (1984) Robyn Hitchcock curries a fascination with the origin of all living organisms and a few dead ones. For many of his most ardent fans, the origin of his mythology is his third, mostly acoustic solo album.
- Linda Smith – Do You Know The Way…? (1988) Last year, Captured Tracks released a compilation of rare, early self-released material from Baltimore singer/songwriter Linda Smith, bringing to the surface highlights from a scarcely heard but nonetheless stunning, mostly cassette-released catalog.
- Avett Brothers
- Fleet Foxes
- The Mountain Goats
- The Decemberists
- Mumford and Sons
- The Lumineers
- Neutral Milk Hotel
- Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
- Of Monsters and Men
- Mipso
If there is a Mount Olympus for indie folk bands, then the Avett Brothers belong in one of the seats of honor upon its celestial peak. As its name suggests, the band’s core members are two brothers, Seth, and Scott Avett. They formed the band from a combination of Seth and Scott’s respective school bands and went on to add guitarist John Twomey and...
The next band on our list is the Fleet Foxes, whose blend of indie folk, chamber pop, and folk rock gained prominence in 2008 after the release of Sun Gian, their second EP. Since then, the group has both seen success and endured several rough patches, including drummer Joshua Tillman’s less-than-amicable departure from the band. Fleet Foxes is an ...
To say the Mountain Goats first “formed” in 1991 is a bit of a misnomer. The band’s founder, John Darnielle, is its only permanent member. Darnielle paired with the reggae group Casual Girls to compose his first Mountain Goats songs. His first big break came with the album Zopilote Machine. Since that time, the Mountain Goats have probed a wide var...
The next group on our list, Decemberists, is one of the more eclectic entries—which says quite a lot, considering that indie folk is one of the most eclectic genres out there. They are known for their baroque musical style, which draws on a variety of different instruments to produce a medley of complex sounds. In terms of content, their work is so...
If you watched Saturday Night Live in the early to mid-2010s, then you know that Mumford and Sons need no introduction. Despite being an indie folk band, Mumford and Sons have had some of the most marked mainstream success of all the groups on this list. Formed in 2007, the band rocketed to fame after appearing at the Grammys alongside patron saint...
The other end of the spectrum from the Decemberists is the Lumineers, bringing the most obviously filigreed sound. Their subdued arrangements and deep, resonant vocals, while powerful, strike a far more minimalist and haunting note than other entries on this list. The Lumineers formed in 2002 as the cover band Free Beer. They developed their sound ...
Formed as a garage band in 1989 and spent their longest period of activity in the 1990s, Neutral Milk Hotelhas remained a seismic influence in the genre of indie folk and indie rock. Their big break came in 1994 with the single “Everything Is,” and although they languished in obscurity in the 2000s, they have sold over 400,000 albums. Unique from t...
The next group on our list is the indie darling Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. If the group’s name conjures associations with the 1960s and 1970s folk, soul, and R&B, this is no accident. In fact, behind smash hit songs like their big break “Home,” is an incredibly bizarre band with a story that seems to belong to another time. The group’s g...
Next up, we have Of Monsters and Men. Bridging the minimalist end of the spectrum with the maximalist, the band’s sound is noteworthy for its tender, nostalgic lyrics, and complex melodies. Of Monsters and Men was formed in 2009 when founder Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir expanded her solo endeavor, Songbird, with five additional members: Brynjar, Rag...
The second to last folk band on this list is a relative newcomer. Formed around 2011, Mipsois a group with roots in the community around the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but their influences go far wider. Founding members Joseph Terrell, Jacob Sharp, Libby Rodenborough, and Wood Robinson met as undergrads at UNC. During their time a...
- The Alamanac Singers. The Almanacs were really the first folk music supergroup and spun off into rather successful careers for Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Josh White, Burl Ives, and various other folks who made up the core of the group or who joined them on occasion.
- Ani DiFranco. Ani DiFranco is probably the most prominent Gen-X folksinger. Since the release of her self-titled debut in 1990, DiFranco has built an excessively loyal fanbase around the world, as well as a rather successful independent record label out of her hometown in Buffalo, NY.
- Ben Harper. It's still remarkable that Ben Harper hasn't blown up any bigger than he is. He's managed to maintain a sort of cult following, bringing his soulful folk stylings to rather biting protest songs and incantations about justice and the human experience.
- Bob Dylan. What list of folk music greats would be complete without a nod to Mr. Bob Dylan? He almost doesn't warrant an explanation as to how and why he deserves to be on this list, but I'll give one, anyway.
Jan 9, 2023 · The 25 Best Indie Folk Albums of 2022. Indie folk has long been one of our favorite genres, as nebulous a descriptor as it may be. Take the acoustic instrumentation or structure of...
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Top Indie Folk Artists by Critic Score. A list of top music artists as rated by Album of The Year. Find ratings, news & reviews for all your favorite music artists.
