When pioneering alt-country band Uncle Tupelo split in the mid-1990s, they broke off into two camps. Jay Farrar started the rootsy, twangy (if lyrically elliptical) Son Volt. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Jeff Tweedy, who co-led the band with Farrar, e…

Bob Dylan began as a Woody Guthrie acolyte, imitating the dust-bowl balladeer as faithfully as a baby boomer from Hibbing, Minnesota, could. It wasn't long before he found his own voice, spearheading the early-1960s folk revival as well as the singer…

This Athens band's initial mix of Velvet Underground strum, Byrds-like Rickenbacker jangle, and charismatically oblique singing, became the sound of the 1980s as legions of bands followed suit. But even as imitators codified R.E.M.'s approach into th…

Tom Waits started out in the early 1970s as a piano-based barroom balladeer with a penchant for beat poetry and West Coast jazz. By the late '80s he had mutated into a brilliantly adventurous artist whose style suggested an amalgam of Howlin' Wolf, K…

Formed in Belleville, Illinois, USA in 1987, Uncle Tupelo revolved around childhood friends and songwriters Jeff Tweedy (b. USA) and Jay Farrar (b. Belleville, Illinois, USA). Primarily influenced by punk, then the blue-collar folk and country of Gra…

Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams started out as the leader of Whiskeytown, one of the most highly regarded alt-country bands of the late 1990s. By 2000, he was a solo artist, delivering a mostly acoustic set of Dylanesque tunes on HEARTBREAKER. By the ti…

Beck Hansen, the quintessential California slacker, came up among the lo-fi ranks, pushing a blend of country blues, Dylan-inspired wordplay, punk, and hip-hop. His straight-out-of-the-gate 1994 smash, "Loser," made him a star seemingly overnight. Su…

Formed in 1996, and hailing from Scotland, Belle & Sebastian are a musical collective with a penchant for ellipticism, declining to have their pictures on album covers or in the press, shying away from interviews, and never listing their individual n…

Nick Drake was the quintessential fragile genius. His late-1960s and early-'70s albums combine pastoral, very British romanticism with a jazzy folk lilt that owes a debt to Tim Buckley and Tim Hardin. His hypnotic whisper of a voice and his virtuosic…

Elliott Smith started out as the leader of Portland-based alt-rock band Heatmiser, who made three mid-1990s albums achieving good reviews but disappointing sales. Eventually Smith reinvented himself as a solo singer-songwriter, and his first couple o…

Lucinda Williams started out recording acoustic covers of classic folk and blues songs, but her own idiosyncratic songwriting soon came to the fore. Her mixture of rock, country, blues, and folk endeared her to a wide audience. Williams's self-titled…

The Clash was one of the first and most important British punk bands. In the 1970s, they were the Beatles to the Sex Pistols' Stones, and went on to incorporate elements from all the roots music they loved--reggae, rockabilly, soul, blues--without ev…

Johnny Cash was part rockabilly rebel, part campfire storyteller, part outlaw in black. Cash made country and rockabilly history on the Sun label in the 1950s. During the '60s, the ruggedly charismatic Cash rose to superstardom, ending the decade wit…

Along with Uncle Tupelo, the Jayhawks were part of the 1980s wave of alt-country (as opposed to 1970s-style country-rock) bands, filtering the influence of artists like Gram Parsons through an alternative rock sensibility. The band's first three albu…

Bright Eyes is the brainchild of Omaha, NE singer-songwriter Conor Oberst, around whom the band (which has at times consisted solely of Oberst) revolves. Part of an Omaha indie scene centered around the Saddle Creek label, Oberst learned at the feet …

Elvis Costello arrived at the tail end of punk with short, incendiary tunes about revenge and guilt, and a visual image to match, looking like a pissed-off Buddy Holly. But the pose belied his musical range and lyrical sophistication, and he came to …

Iron & Wine is the artistic alias of Florida singer/songwriter Sam Beam, who crafts delicate songs full of poetic lyrics and simple, haunting melodies. Beam delivers his tunes in a hushed, Nick Drake-like voice and frames them with spare, mostly acou…

Led by Black Francis (AKA Charles Thompson), this Boston band reveled in the raw, loud energy of punk, but harnessed it in service of catchy melodies laced with bizarre lyrics. Their 1989 album, DOOLITTLE, is widely considered to be one of the best a…

Though Jeff Buckley was adamant about not being compared to his father Tim, his voice and free-floating, improvisatory folk/rock/jazz style bore inescapable echoes of genetic heritage. The Michael Jordan of singers, he had a voice that could soar or …

The mastermind of the Magnetic Fields is Stephin Merritt, an urbane songwriter with a scathing wit, equally influenced by the Pet Shop Boys and Stephen Sondheim. Since 1991, Merritt has married sophisticated wordplay with elegant melodies and (partic…