Click to listen to Ana Egge's 'Hole In Your Halo'

You can't say this North Dakota-raised singer-songwriter doesn't have range. Her 2007 Lazy Days, a breezy concept LP about idleness, covered Arcade Fire and the Kinks. Her latest, a team-up with producer Steve Earle, is folk-rock storytelling stained red and flush with madness. "Blood on the floor," she sings sweetly on "Evil," a standout on a set that's as upbeat musically as it is chilling lyrically. Egge rocks harder than usual on "Driving With No Hands" and works her sublime lower-register on the Richard Thompson-flavored "Shadow Fall." And her sprightly reading of Charlie Rich's kiss-off "There Won’t Be Anymore" places her tuneful noir in a long American tradition of depressing feel-good music. Thank the Puritans.

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“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.