(NEW YORK) - Political singer/songwriter Billy Bragg and roots rock band Wilco are almost finished with an album featuring never-before-released lyrics by folk troubadour Woody Guthrie.|

Although there are few firm details about the as-yet-untitled set, to be released June 23 by Elektra, Bragg claims that most of its songs were written by Guthrie in the late '40s and '50s. "This is not a tribute album," Bragg says, "but a genuine collaboration between contemporary artists and the man who, in many respects, was the original singer/songwriter."

The project came about when Guthrie's daughter Nora, who heads the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York, decided she would like some of her dad's unheard lyrics recorded. She approached Bragg, she claims, because "[He] has a way of getting a message across without being pompous, the same way Woody did."

An American artist who gained most of his fame in the '30s, Guthrie penned more than 1,000 songs. He continued writing lyrics until he was struck down by illness in the '50s, eventually succumbing to Huntington's disease in 1967.