There's a peculiar alchemy at work in "The Merchant's Last Coin," the latest offering from Neural Pantheon, whereby the artist manages to excavate something genuinely unsettling from the bedrock of folk tradition while speaking directly to our contemporary malaise. This isn't the sanitized folk of coffee shop singalongs or heritage festivals; this is folk music that remembers its original purpose—to warn, to haunt, to make you reconsider your choices as you walk home alone through darkened streets.

Basel's LUNA & The Gents arrive with their debut EP like guests at a garden party who've dressed impeccably for the wrong decade – and somehow made everyone else feel underdressed. "SECOND LIFE (PART I)" is a curious proposition: a virtual band wielding real instruments, a modern project steeped in bygone aesthetics, five previously released singles bundled with an extended chanson – the whole enterprise balances precariously between pastiche and genuine artistry.

Fred Presley arrives at a peculiar moment for protest folk music. The genre that once seemed the exclusive province of Greenwich Village coffeehouses and Woodstock mud has been declared dead, revived, and declared dead again so many times that its very existence feels like an act of defiance. Yet here comes this Wethersfield songwriter, acoustic guitar in hand, ready to stand alongside Dylan and Baez in the great tradition of musical agitation.

The Norwegian coastline has long been a repository of cultural memory, its fjords and archipelagos holding stories that resist the homogenizing forces of modernity. Åsmund Nesse, a self-made virtuoso from Bømlo, plants his flag firmly in this rugged terrain with *Indiemann*, an album that proves folk music remains a vital medium for protest, grief, and spiritual reckoning.

The transatlantic artistic journey has produced countless compelling narratives in popular music, yet few arrive with quite the autobiographical precision that John Lebanon brings to "Disco Boi Beirut." This reimagining of his 2018 original emerges not as mere revision but as a fundamental recalibration—a song rediscovered through the prism of eight years' accumulated experience, geographical displacement, and the persistent tug of cultural heritage.

The English duo Guild Theory have long operated in the shadows of the indie-folk landscape, and with "The Statesman," they emerge with a statement of intent that refuses to play by conventional rules. Matt Smith's vocals and Rob's instrumental arrangements converge to create a piece that exists in the liminal space between folk tradition and experimental post-rock ambition.

Birmingham's Wooden Dog have spent the past two years building their reputation as formidable live performers, headlining the O2 Academy and selling out London shows with the kind of grassroots fervor that used to be the only way bands made it. Now, with 'Only Sleeping', they've crafted a record that suggests their ambitions stretch far beyond the Midlands circuit—and they might just have the chops to realize them.

The Irish troubadour returns with a soul-drenched meditation on resilience that manages to channel the Twickenham sessions without succumbing to mere pastiche. "Bring It Back To Life," the second single from Ben Reel's forthcoming twelfth studio album *Spirit's Not Broken*, arrives as both a sonic time capsule and a remarkably current statement of purpose—a balancing act that shouldn't work as well as it does.

D. West's *Cathedrals Beneath the Black Mountain* arrives as a meditation rather than a manifesto, its instrumental architecture built from fingerpicked steel and pregnant silences. Released through Liverpool's Hollow Gesture Records—a label devoted to primitive and instrumental guitar works—this collection occupies territory where Bert Jansch's modal explorations meet the more austere corners of American primitive guitar, yet it resists easy categorization with a peculiar stubbornness.

George Collins occupies a peculiar position within contemporary rock: the Prague-based American songwriter who walked away from a twenty-year career in finance at fifty to pursue music full-time, who once shared stages with future Dave Matthews Band members Carter Beauford and the late LeRoi Moore, and who now—approaching seventy—delivers work that carries the accumulated weight of a life fully examined. 'Black and White World', the lead single from his forthcoming album *New Ways of Getting Old*, represents Collins at his most purposeful, marshaling hard-won wisdom into a protest anthem for nuance itself.