This week, Dasha previews her upcoming EP Anna with a tender track chronicling the slow process of making a new town feel like home. HARDY also previews his upcoming album Country! Country! with a tender track that looks at life from the perspective of man’s best friend. Meanwhile, bluegrass group The Infamous Stringdusters offer up a country-tilted new track, while Chase Rice brings a rustic, introspective new song, and Lauren Watkins and John Morgan team up for a new collaboration.
Check out all of these and more in Billboard‘s roundup of some of the best country, bluegrass and/or Americana songs of the week below.
Dasha, “Train”
“Austin” hitmaker Dasha trades boot-stompin’ rhythms for tender introspection on her latest song. Elevated by slashes of pedal steel and dobro, “Train” depicts the slow accumulation of moments that prove one’s transition from stranger in a new town to resident, when the new space begins to feel more familiar. The sound of a train that was once jarring becomes background noise, pictures hung on a wall makes a new place feel cozy and newly-forged friendships begin to give a sense of community. “You learn the turns and time the lights/ The town you didn’t recognize becomes a little more like home,” she sings, while her tender, conversational vocal style proves a perfect fit for the song’s tender sentiments. “Train” marks singer-songwriter Dasha’s first outside cut, and is a solo write from Kyle Sturrock. Her EP Anna releases Oct. 10.
HARDY, “Dog Years”
HARDY once again proves why he’s one of country music’s most talented tunesmiths on his new release. The decade-old song underscores his sharp songwriting instincts, even in his formative years as a writer in Nashville. Written from the perspective of a faithful canine, the song finds the pooch at the end of it’s life, recalling the day he was rescued from the side of the road, and vividly detailing the scores of memories made since that day and highlighting the bond between humans and their pets. Though the song’s premise has potential to veer into overly-sentimental sappiness, the song’s rich portrayal of key memories keeps it feeling like a vulnerable but respectful tribute. This solo write from HARDY previews his upcoming album Country! Country!, out Friday (Sept. 26).
Chase Rice, “Good Side of Gettin’ Older”
Over the past several years, Chase Rice has left his bro-country past behind him and reinvented himself with a sound that leans more heavily on rustic instrumentals and vulnerable, oftentimes poetic lyrics. He continues that run on his new project, the stripped-back Eldora. This song from the project, “Good Side of Gettin’ Older,” written by Rice, Oscar Charles and Wyatt McCubbin, encapsulates the inevitability of time’s passage, but frames it not with nostalgia, but with a resolve to embrace what lies ahead. “Life has got me writing different songs/ And time’s got me missing things before they’re gone,” he sings. Like the rest of the project, “Good Side” is woven with captivating lyricism and heightened by Rice’s warm vocal tone.
The Infamous Stringdusters, “Dead Man Walking”
Grammy-winning band The Infamous Stringdusters, known for their latticework of country, bluegrass and folk sounds, lean into more heavily into the country sphere on their new single, while still retaining the group’s superb musicianship and intricate arrangements. Written by the Dusters and Larry Keel, the song’s vulnerable lyrics are boosted in particular by banjoist Chris Pandolfi and dobro player Andy Hall, who serve up blistering cascades of banjo and dobro, alongside bandmates Travis Book (double bass), Jeremy Garrett (fiddle) and Andy Falco (guitar). The Infamous Stringdusters will release their new album, 20/20, on Jan. 23, 2026.
Lauren Watkins and John Morgan, “Slippery Slope”
Lauren Watkins and John Morgan team up for this barroom weeper, as they look at the “slippery slope” of how a single drink and the smokey haze of a favored local dive bar is continually the catalyst to a relational backslide in a complex, on-again, off-again romance. Their lilting voices wrap gloriously around lines such as “Why can’t a round just be one round/ When we end up in the same bar?” Watkins wrote this track with Will Bundy, Mark Trussell and Lydia Vaughan. “Slippery Slope” is on Watkins’s upcoming project In A Perfect World, out Oct. 10.
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