Some things are meant to be. When Portland/Edmonton songwriter Sammy Volkov released his first album Be Alright! in 2022, Edmontonian Dana Wylie sang backup vocals and the two quickly realized they needed to continue their luscious musical conversation. Following her early experience in theatre, Wylie’s musical path led through Taiwan, where she played jazz, bluegrass, blues and in jug bands before moving to the UK in 2005 and touring steadily for half a decade, releasing three albums before returning to Canada.

While she brought deep musical experience to the duo’s 2024 album, The Day Had to Come, Volkov, too, had been honing his songs in New York at Brooklyn open mics while working in television after living in Los Angeles. Their enthralling, cloudless voices are as clear, true and soaring as a May prairie sky, though their songs’ themes of love gone awry might help you release a little rain of your own. These are stamped by deft lyrical strokes, not a wasted moment, not a wasted movement, completing uncluttered, exquisite songs that are simply beautiful.

- Mary-Lynn Wardle