Having written her first song at age 35, Mary Gauthier may be considered a late bloomer in music, but she was hardly idle in the preceding years. After running away from her adoptive parents at 15, Gauthier spent more than a decade dealing with substance abuse, struggling with her sexuality and bouncing between rehab, jail and halfway houses. She transmits those experiences in emotionally loaded tunes colored by her dark past. Gauthier's gorgeously haunted songs have gothic folk roots graced with Cajun and country tinges, appropriate for a New Orleans native who now resides in Nashville. She performs in duo format with Tania Elizabeth of The Duhks on fiddle and harmonies. —Spencer Griffith