New and noteworthy

Your Face Is Like the Moon, Your Eyes Are Stars

Bhutan Balladeers

An a cappella women’s choir singing in a language that only Bhutanese Buddhist monks can understand and that sounds phase-shifted but isn’t opens this collection of hoary Eastern Himalayan folk. Tonally adroit solo vocalists accompanied by a three-double-stringed lute, a bowed two-string fiddle, a dulcimer, or a flute comprise most of the others. Every song is so exotic that each time you try to match what you’re hearing to its English title (e.g., “The Horse Is Our Friend”) feels like the first.

Fathers & Sons

Luke Combs

Of the nine (of 12) songs that bear Combs’ name, three have four co-writers, three others have three, one has two, and two have one. So it’s hard to say whence comes the abundance of insight about being a loving father or a grateful son. (Rhett Akins and Ben Stennis’ “Whoever You Turn Out To Be” is the wisest.) What’s not hard to say: If you’ve ever tried to be a loving father or a grateful son (and if you like country music), the relentless emotional bull’s-eyes will at some point have you dabbing your eyes.

A la Sala

Khruangbin

If you can imagine Hank Marvin distilled in Santo & Johnny’s “Sleep Walk” and Tom Verlaine’s noir-like Warm and Cool, you’ll have a good idea of what Mark Speer’s guitar sounds like. Keeping it and the occasional unforegrounded background vocals from floating into the easy-listening ether are Laura Lee’s nimble, counter-­melodic bass and DJ Johnson’s crisp snare hits, the latter of which tug Speer back to earth like a rhythmically gifted child’s wrist tied to a helium balloon. The gently funky “Pon Pón” needs no grounding whatsoever.

Talking to Strangers

Jack McKeon

The instruments may be bluegrass (banjo, dobro, fiddle, acoustic guitar, no drums), but the voice, the melodies, and the subject matter are straight-up country-folk Americana. At his strongest, McKeon makes sympathy for the fragility of small towns (“Highway 29,” “Last Slice of Heaven”) and their inhabitants (“Crooked Teeth,” “Waffle House Wonder”) seem like a feeling worth nourishing. He has an endearing sense of humor too (“Hard Headed”). His kryptonite is inexact rhyme. “Time/sky,” “guess/test,” “find/pine,” “deeper/sweeter,” “new/fools”—sprinkle those across an album and maybe no one will notice. Put them all in one song as McKeon does, and you’ll risk coming off sloppy, lazy, or both.

Encore

“Some of the most lauded voices in country music explore the extensive Petty catalog and put their own ­personal touches on some of his greatest hits.” So reads the official pitch for Big Machine Records’ new 20-track Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty, and it’s partly correct: The voices really are some of country music’s most lauded (Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Dierks Bentley, Wynonna Judd). The personal touches, however, are another matter.

With the exception of Dolly Parton’s moving “Southern Accents” (one of three songs not already enshrined in Petty’s The Best of Everything: The Definitive Career Spanning Hits Collection 1976-2016) and Rhiannon Giddens’ Silkroad Ensemble-fied “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” the performances follow Petty’s blueprints down to the smallest detail. But if their doing so is a minus, it’s also a plus. There may come a day, in fact, when people enjoy these exuberant imitations as much as they enjoy the originals. —A.O.