Album: Kathryn Roberts & Sean Lakeman, Hidden People (Navigator)

Husband-and-wife team Kathryn Roberts & Sean Lakeman have many associations with the folk scene, notably with Lakeman's brother Seth and Roberts' fellow South Yorkshire siren Kate Rusby.

But Hidden People is their first album as a duo. It's a well-chosen blend of traditional themes and contemporary concerns, the former in the retributive haunting of "Hang the Rowan" and metamorphic tragedy of "The White Hind" – a girl transformed into a doe is killed by her hunter brother. The social themes are best handled in "The Ballad of Andy Jacobs" and the country-funk "Standing at my Window" furnishes the album's perkiest moment.

Download: Oxford, NY; Hang the Rowan; Standing At My Window