It was a good year to be young and bearded. A good decade, really. The aughts kicked off with the release of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, whose soundtrack opened the eyes of at least one generation to the pleasures of underproduced plucking and simple melodies; and ended with three harbingers of the so-called "indie [...]

Monsters of Folk might seem like an inappropriate moniker for indie darlings Jim James, M. Ward, Conor Oberst, and Oberst collaborator Mike Mogis.
The supergroup kicks off its self-titled debut with a number that might fit more comfortably in the genre of Christian R&B pop: “Sometimes it’s so hard to believe in/But God, I know you [...]