Kate Rusby

You could accuse British folksinger Kate Rusby of making the same album over and over, but you’d be missing the point. Barely into her 20s and already on her third solo album, Rusby just hasn’t finished mining the rich vein of original and traditional songs featured on her first two albums (Hourglass and Sleepless). On Little Lights, she again delivers a marvelous program of songs new (her own "I Courted a Sailor" and "Let the Cold Wind Blow"), old ("Merry Green Broom" and American gospel standard "Canaan’s Land") and middle-aged (a sweetly affecting rendition of Richard Thompson’s "Withered and Died"). And again, she’s accompanied by an all-star cast of British and American instrumentalists, including Danny Thompson, Eddi Reader and Tim O’Brien, as well as Compass label head Alison Brown on banjo. Great, great stuff.