Folk & Indie Folk
Traditional folk to freak-folk to the modern indie-folk crowd — songs with the wiring exposed. Folk vinyl at Wax Trax.
Traditional folk to freak-folk to the modern indie-folk crowd — songs with the wiring exposed. Folk vinyl at Wax Trax.
Folk is the songwriter genre — voice, an instrument or two, and nowhere to hide. The traditional and protest era (Woody Guthrie, the early Dylan, Joan Baez) gave way to the singer-songwriter '70s, the freak-folk strangeness of Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, and the modern indie-folk wave (Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Big Thief) that put it back on festival stages. It's intimate music, and it sounds genuinely better with a little vinyl warmth around it.
Traditional and protest folk, '60s–'70s singer-songwriter, freak-folk and psych-folk, and current indie folk — including the indie-exclusive pressings the modern crowd loves. If you live in the Venn overlap of folk, country and indie, you'll be busy here.
What's the difference between folk and indie folk?
Indie folk is folk's modern, indie-rock-adjacent descendant — same acoustic intimacy, often with more production and atmosphere. Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes are indie folk; Woody Guthrie is folk. The bloodline is direct.
Do you carry the indie-folk exclusive pressings?
Yes — the modern indie-folk acts release a lot of color and store-exclusive variants, and we stock them as they come.
Is there overlap with your Country section?
Plenty — Americana sits right on the border. Worth checking both if that's your zone.