Lucy Kaplansky

The therapeutic obsession inherent in the singer-songwriter genre is enough to send listeners straight to the crack pipe (if not the razorblade). Solo strummers often forget that music isn't about getting in touch with the self; it's about getting in touch with music. Though she holds a PhD in clinical psychology, New York new folkie Lucy Kaplansky mostly understands how music trumps confession, even as she's clearly mastered the risky art of self-spelunking. On last year's Over the Hills she turns the experience of motherhood into a country-rock workout with enough fuzz-and-sparkle steel guitar, doubled vocals and slapping congas to illuminate the bare acoustic guitar figures — or to transform Bryan Ferry's "More Than This" into a sonic dreamscape that's more Roxy than folkie.