Breaking Artist: Blitzen Trapper

Who: Six nature-loving mountain men from Portland, Oregon, who play roots folk with a contemporary twist.

Sounds Like: Sunbaked lyrics about mountains and rivers merged with ramshackle guitar grooves and cheap keyboards.

Three Things You Should Know:
1. The band got their big break when the Hold Steady asked Blitzen to open for them in May.
2. Music runs in frontman Eric Earley's family. His grandfather was a traveling harmonica virtuoso from the Ozarks. "Family reunions were all about banjos and bluegrass," Earley recalls.
3. Earley recorded most of the band's third record, Wild Mountain Nation, himself in a makeshift studio that used to be a telegraph station using vintage Casios, an old piano and a four-track recorder.

Get It: They're always available on their official Web page.

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

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.

More Song Stories entries »

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