FEEBLE LITTLE HORSE Girl with Fish (Saddle Creek) — For Feeble Little Horse’s first studio album recorded under their pact with Saddle Creek (their previous LP was reissued by the stalwart indie label), the Pittsburgh band unleashes a torrent of beautiful, delicate noise. Fronted by vocalist Lydia Slocum, the band wastes no time positioning themselves as practitioners of of artful abrasion; Girl with Fish album opener “Freak” is so buzzy it’s like a wasps’ nest recorded it. With the case closed on whether they can make a splendid racket, Feeble Little Horse goes to to offer evidence that demonstrates how many different ways they can channel their tangled sounds. “Tin Man” is like something wrung out by a tougher version of Sebadoh, and “Station” is just precise and delicate enough to slide into the Big Thief zone. The whole album is a bounty of clashing, crackling sounds. Go fishin’ with the following additional tracks: “Steamroller,” “Sweet,” “Pocket,” and “Heavy Water.”

JESS WILLIAMSON Time Ain’t Accidental (Mexican Summer) — With several solo studio albums to her credit, singer-songwriter Jess Williamson is no newcomer. Even so, she was surely discovered by a fair number of otherwise attuned music fans when she teamed up with Waxahatchee wizard Katie Crutchfield for last year’s I Walked with You a Ways, an apparently one-off outing for the duo using the name Plains. Williamson makes the most of the resulting itching-to-be-struck hot iron with Time Ain’t Accidental, her fifth album. The plaintive, country-livin’ storytelling that made the Plains album so appealing is maybe even stronger here. With melodies that lang between folk and country, Williamson belts out songs about losing and finding love, feeling lost in pandemic stasis, and generally trying to get by. She has a gift for description and metaphor that can deliver a total sense of being in a few lines, as on standout track “Hunter”: I want a mirror not a piece of glass/ We went a hundred down the highway/ I been known to move a little fast/ I’m a hunter for the real thing.” Be purposeful and check the following cuts: “Chasing Spirits,” “God in Everything,” “Something’s in the Way,” “Roads,” and the stellar title cut.

JENNY LEWIS Joy’All (Blue Note/Capitol) — There’s been discernible twang nestled within Jenny Lewis’s music going back at least as far back as Rabbit Fur Coat, her sorta solo debut (technically, the album is co-billed with the Watson Twins). And she basically styled herself as a rhinestone cowgirl on her last album, the absolutely top-notch On the Line. For Lewis’s latest — and first since jumping from Warners Bros. to venerable jazz label Blue Note — she’s given in entirely to the gleaming Nashville lights. Lewis has cited old-time country legend Skeeter Davis as an inspiration for the new album, but sleek, gently dance-friendly tracks such as “Giddy Up” suggest that more modern doyenne Kacey Musgraves might be a more apt touchstone. In determining whether Lewis is a capable practitioner of the genre or a questionable interloper, “Puppy and a Truck” is the litmus test. Anyone who finds Lewis’s eager embrace of well-worn tropes sincere, charming, and celebratory is bound for glory with the rest of the album. Maybe Lewis has donned a costume this time out, but it sure seems to fit nicely. Embrace Joy’All with “Psychos,” “Apples and Oranges,” and “Cherry Baby.”