MUSIC
Readers’ Choice: The Days
Readers’ Choice: Cool Kids
a lupefiasco.com
a flosstradamus.com
Best Folk, Country, or Americana Group
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Maybe this pick is a reach when so many local traditional acts do their genres such honor (Devil in a Woodpile, Tangleweed, the Hoyle Brothers, and the many faces of Kelly Hogan, for starters). But this all-female freak-folk band is something different under the sun. They play goose-bump-inducing music that sounds like the ancient oral tradition of a culture of their own invention, and they play it with a sort of primordial shamanistic elegance and economy of purpose. Still, I was having a little angst over this decision, until “Black Earth” from their latest, Curse the Traced Bird, shuffled up on my iPod. I froze stock-still in haunted wonder, as if I were hearing it for the first time—and did I mention I was crossing State Street at the time? A band that can override your survival instinct wins. amyspace.com/spiresthatinthesunsetrise. —Monica Kendrick
