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Grammy-nominated songwriter and performer Sylvia (born Sylvia Jane Kirby) wants people to look inside the next time they think they need help. The tendency, of course, is to look outward for answers. Can someone help me out of this? Who can save me? These are the questions we ask ourselves in our dark hours. But, Sylvia says, we may find better answers if we look to our instincts and our most distilled judgment. These aren’t easy lessons to learn, however. Sylvia, who rose to fame in the ’80s while in her 20s, has now learned from experience.

She’s figured out what to shed and what to keep. Today, she says, she lives in the moment, listening to her own ideas as guidance. The result is the record she’s always wanted to make. An album that offers its listeners a path forward that’s also a path internal. And it begins with a song that American Songwriter is premiering today, “Avalon,” which is the first track from her forthcoming LP, Nature Child, due out on February 22.

If you ask Joe Newman, vocalist, and co-founder of the popular band alt-J, about the genesis of the band’s new record, The Dream, which is out Friday (February 11), he’ll tell you it all began, essentially, the day he got his first guitar. While, to some, that answer may seem cheeky or even flip, for Newman, it’s completely true. For him, the process of writing songs isn’t something that begins in the morning on a given day and concludes that night. Instead, for the artist, a song may begin 20 years or more before it’s set to record. Or a bit of it may start one year, another bit on another, and even a third chunk some years later. In this way, songwriting, like healing, is not linear. It’s more like assembling a bouquet.

Songwriter and performer Mason Jennings lives right by a lake in Minnesota. In his home, there are large glass windows to look out onto the water. It’s from this vantage point that Jennings wrote many of the songs for his new forthcoming LP, Real Heart, which is set to drop on Friday (February 4). He wrote these songs on his acoustic guitar, singing with the instrument on the demos. Over the past four years, Jennings has done this, amassing a nice collection. To get another artist’s perspective, Jennings sent the batch to his friend and bandmate (Painted Shield), Stone Gossard, of Pearl Jam. At first, Jennings thought he’d drop the guitar and add new instrumentation. But Gossard recognized the central quality the six-string had. It was important for the tender, open-hearted LP. And so Jennings kept it prominent.

Innovative bi-coastal artist, Bitch (born Karen Mould), was raised with tap dancing coming through the floorboards. Her mother was a tap teacher, and she had a school in their basement. As such, the tip-twap-tip-twap of the art form was underneath her at all hours. Bitch also remembers watching Sesame Street as a young child. It was on an early episode that she first saw the violin. She was three years old at the time and she soon began to beg her parents for the instrument for herself. At four, she was playing it. Today, the violin features on her forthcoming album, Bitchcraft, which is set for release Friday (February 4). The LP, her first since 2013, showcases the sounds that, Bitch says, were the foundation of her first real communications.

Legendary songwriter and performer John Mellencamp says the songs he writes are sent to him. “I’m just a conduit,” he says, “for whatever message is being sent to me.”

When it comes to the songs on Mellencamp’s newest LP, Strictly A One-Eyed Jack, which was released on Friday (January 21), the artist says he knows exactly who sent them. The American actor and director, John Huston. “They gotta be,” Mellencamp says. Huston, he adds, was definitely a “one-eyed Jack.” And while the new LP is not about Huston, per se, the songs, Mellencamp says, are sent from the late auteur (Huston died in 1987). No matter how they got into his creative mind, the songs on Mellencamp’s newest record are largely stunning. They feature his ever-so-gravely voice, as well as his somber tone and nuanced touch.

Any creative person (or Lego enthusiast) will tell you that not every combination of elements yields positive results. Sometimes even the best towers—proverbial and actual—will tumble given the wrong amalgamation. That’s why the Atlanta-born hard rock band Mastodon is such a remarkable entity. The group is one of those in which the pieces just fit. Since its inception in 2000, the four-piece band has amassed eight studio LPs, including its most recent, the Grammy-nominated Hushed and Grim in 2021. And Mastodon’s album prior, Emperor of Sand (2017), earned the group its first Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. Today, Mastodon is set to get back out on the road with a co-headline tour in March (followed by one in Europe in the summer). After two-plus-decades together, they’re still building and growing. It’s a testament to the chemistry that bonds the band’s four members.

Grandson—aka the Los Angeles-based artist, Jordan Benjamin—is an optimist. When the rain pours, that just means more flowers. If one plan has to fold, that must mean another is about to open. If he’s at the end of one road, turn left or right, a new road is right there. That’s the spirit the musician has used throughout his career. And whether fans notice it explicitly or not, it’s present and it resonates in his music. But in order to maintain this sense of optimism, something must hold. Grandson is rooted in an aim to make work that feels honest and engenders self-satisfaction, pride. It’s the result of myriad hours spent and almost as many musical influences. Today, with an acclaimed debut LP in his rearview along with recent collaborations with artists like Kesha, Travis Barker, and Vic Mensa, grandson is slated for a swath of tour dates in 2022.

For Brent Smith, frontman of the acclaimed Jacksonville, Florida-based rock group Shinedown, honesty is always the best policy. That idea may seem obvious on the face of it. But it can also seem that the more one looks around, the more dishonesty or diversion seems to proliferate the ether. Smith knows this, too. What he also knows is how tricky it can seem to be honest, both with oneself and with others. Honesty is not about consistency or regularity. Sometimes to know the truth about something requires one to be uncomfortable. Smith is aware of this, as well.

These philosophies and vantage points show up in Shinedown’s songs. Their tracks are complex and diverse. The music grabs and shakes as much as it provokes the brain. And this has perhaps never been more evident than on the band’s latest single, “Planet Zero,” which is out today (Jan. 26) and portends a new album of the same name, slated for April 22.

For Danish artist MØ (born Karen Marie Aagaard Ørsted Andersen), life for a while felt something like a hamster wheel. But it didn’t begin that way—not musically.

As a young person growing up in Denmark, MØ first felt the surge of music at eight years old when she first laid ears on the Spice Girls. Before that, she’d let the songs of her mom and dad essentially wash over her. But when she heard the Spice Girls’ LPs, she lost herself in them and listened repeatedly.

Her family is comprised of academics—except for MØ. She didn’t feel comfortable studying diligently, yet also never knew how to make a music career begin early on. Soon, she discovered punk rock, trading in her ambition to be Sporty Spice to be Kim Gordon. She found like-minded friends. Her interests became layered. In her twenties, MØ’s career took off. So much so, however, that burnout found her. Now, at 33 years old, the artist is back with her best work yet—a 10-track LP born from resilience, Motordrome, out on Friday (January 28).