With five Western Canadian Music Award wins and a plethora of nominations for JUNO Awards and Canadian Folk Music Awards, Del Barber has spent the past 14 years patiently shaping the folk music canon in Canada. Del’s previous six albums have been critically acclaimed and the latest, Stray Dogs, finds him bridging the past and present. Conceived during pandemic isolation at Del’s rural Manitoba home, the eight songs on Stray Dogs are drawn mainly from his large stock of previously unfinished demos and are given renewed focus and polish by producer and longtime bandmate Scott Franchuk. The acoustic-based Stray Dogs captures the essence of Del’s art, of which Rolling Stone Magazine wrote, “Like John Prine, Barber writes the types of songs his characters might listen to themselves.”

Lucette is the moniker of Canadian artist Lauren Gillis, a soulful and emotive singer who self-describes her music as “country infused dream-pop”. Her two albums vary from dark folk and southern gothic tales to what Rolling Stone describes as “a bold expansion of Lucette’s melodic sensibilities…that avoid the rootsy clichés of Americana music.”