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When John Lurie was in his mid-teens, his sister gave his older brother a harmonica for his birthday. That, combined with the acquisition of a Little Walter record, had the two brothers obsessed with both the idea of the instrument and making music together. Lurie, who today stars in the HBO television show Painting With John, which debuts its second season on Friday (February 18), practiced on the harmonica obsessively. In high school, he and his brother started a band called Crud in which he played and sang. Not long after, he jammed with Mississippi Fred McDowell and Canned Heat with John Lee Hooker. Thus, a career in the arts was born.

Growing up in Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers, Lester Chambers used to love to hear his voice in harmony. What’s more, he loved hearing that harmony echo. Today, the 81-year-old frontman for the Bay Area-based band Moonalice looks back on those early years fondly. It was the time when his dream began—a dream that’s continued through today, into his ninth decade. In this way, Chambers’ voice has been echoing in real-time as long as anybody’s in music history. And that career continues with Moonalice’s latest single, “Let’s Get Funky,” a song Chambers first began to write some 50 years ago and one that American Songwriter is premiering today in its latest form.

If there’s a secret to the success of the Michigan-born rock band Greta Van Fleet, it’s that the members have always allowed themselves to push the proverbial envelope—to go deep, further, and even toward the weird in their work. To head toward extremes says the group’s frontman and lead singer, Josh Kiszka. The band, which is comprised of brothers Josh on the mic, Jake on guitar, and Sam on bass, along with close friend Danny Wagner on drums, didn’t limit themselves in their exploration and internal discoveries as they coalesced and improved as musicians. The strategy has worked. The result so far has been sold our tours, an SNL appearance, and Grammy recognition. But accolades aren’t necessarily what drives the band. Rather, acceptance from their heroes is, along with the process of going through that which excites and calms their creative minds, which occurs almost in the same breath.

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.