I’m a sucker for most things to do with Louisiana – crawfish and alligators, bayous and paddleboats, zydeco and cajun music, gumbo and jambalaya, Dr John and Fats Domino, voodoo and Mardi Gras. So I’m loving this song by Waxahatchee.

I’m also loving the video shot on Caddo Lake, an apt location for an artist – Katie Crutchfield – who takes her stage name from a lake (well, technically a creek) near her childhood home in Alabama.

Caddo Lake is 500 miles west of there and is literally bisected by Louisiana and Texas. So I’m not sure which side of the stateline Katie Crutchfield’s boat is – I like to think she’s on one side and MJ Lenderman is doing his harmonies on the other.

Their voices meld perfectly on this tune, carried by Phil Cook’s banjo and the languid rhythms of Brad Cook and Spencer Tweedy, with Lenderman adding acoustic guitar to Crutchfield’s electric.

There’s always been an element of Americana to Waxahatchee, whose five albums have straddled folk rock, indie rock and country rock since 2011, but this is a step farther than before.

I’m hoping that will be the case with their new album Tigers Blood, and on the evidence of this track and another new one, Bored – with another great video shot at the Devil’s Backbone Tavern in Fischer, Texas – suggests it will.

So it should be: country music is the natural home for an artist who says her comfort zone when writing songs lies “somewhere on the emotional spectrum of sadness and heartache.”

Crutchfield, who lives in Kansas with her musician partner Kevin Morby, wrote most of the songs on Tigers Blood during a “hot hand spell” while on tour in 2022 and recorded the album in the border town Tornillo, Texas.