The Lesbian Folk Renaissance Is Real and We’re Obsessed

There is a movement happening in folk and Americana music right now. It is quiet, it is devastatingly beautiful, and it has a disproportionate number of queer women at its center. If you haven’t noticed yet, this article is your intervention.

Brandi Carlile: The OG

If there is a godmother of this moment, it’s Brandi Carlile. She has been making music for twenty years, she has won seven Grammy Awards, and she continues to be one of the most emotionally precise songwriters working in any genre. By the Way, I Forgive You is the album that broke her into the mainstream, but go back to The Story to hear where it started. The title track is still one of the most powerful vocal performances you will ever hear. She is openly gay, openly in love with her wife and family, and her music carries all of that warmth.

Adrianne Lenker: Big Thief and Solo

Adrianne Lenker is the frontwoman of Big Thief, one of the best bands of their generation, but her solo work is where things get truly interior. abysskiss and songs are quiet and raw and feel like reading someone’s most private journal. She writes about love and loss and bodies and the natural world with a tenderness that is almost hard to take. Put on headphones and sit with it. It asks something of you and gives more back.

Ethel Cain: Southern Gothic Devastation

Ethel Cain’s debut album Preacher’s Daughter is a full concept record about a girl from the American South, the church, trauma, violence, and transcendence. It is one of the most discussed albums of 2022 and the conversation is still going. Cain is a trans woman who grew up in a religious household, and the album processes all of that through a lens of Southern Gothic horror and genuine beauty. “Gibson Girl” and “Thoroughfare” are essential. The album rewards listening straight through.

Indigo De Souza: For When You Need to Feel It

Indigo De Souza makes folk-adjacent indie rock about grief and the body and the strangeness of being alive. Her album Any Shape You Take is one of those records that people describe as changing them and mean it literally. She is queer, she performs with enormous vulnerability, and she has a talent for writing the sentence that you didn’t know you needed to hear. “Real Pain” and “Hold U” will stay with you.

Lucy Dacus: The Quiet Devastator

Lucy Dacus is a member of boygenius alongside Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, which is basically the folk supergroup that queer women manifested into existence. Her solo album Home Video is a masterclass in writing about memory and girlhood. “Thumbs” is funny and horrifying in equal measure. “Thumbs” will make you uncomfortable in a way that feels earned. She is an extraordinary writer.

The Whole boygenius Thing

Bridgers, Dacus, and Baker deserve their own article, but: three queer women making folk rock together is objectively perfect and their self-titled album and The Record are both essential. They are three of the best songwriters of their generation and they are all very publicly gay. The girls are giving, consistently and without exception.

Make yourself a playlist and clear your afternoon. This music deserves your full attention.