Blending a rugged indie rock sensibility with deep country roots, Plains is a collaboration between singer/songwriters Katie Crutchfield and Jess Williamson. The duo released their debut album, I Walked with You a Ways, in 2022 on the ANTI- label.

After charting similar career paths, Crutchfield -- an Alabama native best known for her solo project Waxahatchee -- and Williamson, who is from Texas, met in 2020. The two friends had been introduced a few years earlier and bonded over a shared love of the country music they'd grown up with. After rebelling as punk and indie rock musicians, both artists became known for channeling their respective visions of country music and Southern heritage into their intelligent and emotional songwriting. During the front half of 2020, the two friends had each released acclaimed, career-making solo albums -- Waxahatchee's Saint Cloud and Williamson's Sorceress, respectively -- but were unable to tour in support of them due to the global pandemic.

A plan came together to collaborate on a new project which they named Plains. The duo's influences ranged from country icons like Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris and mavericks like Lucinda Williams to the '90s country of their formative years like the Chicks and Shania Twain. Recording with musician and producer Brad Cook and drummer Spencer Tweedy, Plains landed on a unique mixture of their own individual attributes filtered through the spontaneity of loose, in-the-room collaboration. Their first album, I Walked with You a Ways, came out on ANTI- Records in late 2022. ~ Timothy Monger

Though Waxahatchee has spanned self-recorded solo material, reflective folk-rock, and more raucous, full-band indie rock, the project has remained intensely personal in nature. Making her debut with the breakup-inspired American Weekend in 2012, songwriter Katie Crutchfield continued to amplify her knack for hooks and engaging melodies with her John Agnello-co-produced fourth LP, 2017's Out in the Storm. A year later, she reversed course with the spare Great Thunder EP, which revisited material from her side duo with Keith Spencer from Swearin', while 2020's Saint Cloud settled into a more reflective folk-rock. Waxahatchee continued in this Americana direction with 2024's Tigers Blood.

Named after the lake not far from her parents' house in Alabama, Waxahatchee began as a solo project for musician Katie Crutchfield in 2011. That year, the moniker first appeared on a split cassette with Chris Calvin. Crutchfield had been writing songs since her early teens and played for a while with her twin sister, Allison, in the scrappy punk outfit P.S. Eliot. That group disbanded around the time of a serious breakup, and Crutchfield stole away to her parents' country home, where she recorded the songs that would become Waxahatchee's lo-fi debut full-length, 2012's American Weekend. The confessional songs on the project's debut gained Waxahatchee more exposure, and Crutchfield began performing in and around Philadelphia, where she had moved.

Around that time, she also formed the lo-fi duo Great Thunder with Keith Spencer from her sister's band Swearin'. They released the LP Sounds of Great Thunder in 2012, and when Crutchfield assembled a backing band for Waxahatchee live shows, he signed on as drummer. In March 2013, her still intimate but more expansive sophomore album, Cerulean Salt, was released to largely positive critical reviews. She was joined on the album by Spencer, Kyle Gilbride, Radiator Hospital's Sam Cook-Parrott, and her sister. Great Thunder released the Strange Kicks EP and Groovy Kinda Love LP later in 2013, and Waxahatchee toured internationally for the next year, gaining fans and listeners as her profile grew.

In early 2015, Waxahatchee signed with Merge Records for the U.S. release of their third LP, Ivy Tripp. Continuing a trend toward a fuller, more aggressive sound, the album saw release in April of that year and marked her debut on the Billboard 200. Joined in the studio by producer John Agnello, Allison Crutchfield, bassist Katherine Simonetti, and drummer Ashley Arnwine, among others, she followed it in 2017 with the defiant Out in the Storm, about overcoming a toxic relationship. Her next release covered a selection of Great Thunder tracks, which she re-recorded with producer Brad Cook. Stripping down arrangements to mostly piano, the six-track Great Thunder EP arrived in Merge in 2018. Returning to the studio with Cook, she recorded her more country-rock-minded fifth long-player with Bobby Colombo and Bill Lennox of Bonny Doon, Bonny Light Horseman's Josh Kaufman, and Elvis Perkins in Dearland's Nick Kinsey as her backing band. The resulting Saint Cloud was released in March 2020 to widespread critical acclaim. After contributing a cover of "Talking Dust Bowl Blues" to the 2021 Woody Guthrie tribute Home in This World, Crutchfield returned in January 2022 with her original soundtrack to the Apple TV+ series El Deafo.

Crutchfield continued to work with Brad Cook on Tigers Blood, a 2024 album largely recorded at Sonic Ranch in Texas. Tigers Blood featured a band comprising drummer Spencer Tweedy and guitarist MJ Lenderman. ~ Marcy Donelson & Fred Thomas

Singer and songwriter Jess Williamson is an artist whose music looks to the past for inspiration but is performed with an updated outlook and emotional range that give it a thoroughly contemporary feel. Williamson's spare and evocative melodies and poetic, deeply personal lyrics are influenced by psychedelia and the songwriters' movement of the '70s, yet the breathy soprano voice and blend of acoustic and electric textures in her performances put her in step with her indie folk contemporaries. Williamson's music was at its simplest and most introspective on her 2014 debut album, Native State, while 2018's Cosmic Wink broadened her range with fuller arrangements and more adventurous production. 2020's Sorceress found her subtly incorporating elements of electronic music and vintage pop. Working with producer Brad Cook, she released both 2022's I Walked with You a Ways (a collaboration with Waxahatchee's Katie Crutchfield) and 2023's Time Ain't Accidental, her emotive fifth album.

Jess Williamson was born and raised in a suburb near Dallas, Texas, an only child whose parents enjoyed listening to blues, folk, and country music, in particular Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, and the Judds. Williamson was still in grade school when she discovered she loved singing, and would sometimes entertain her classmates during recess with her renditions of favorite tunes. It was when Williamson moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas that her interest in music moved to the next level. She was studying photojournalism and began photographing and writing about local bands for the university's newspaper, and was soon hosting a show on the campus radio station. After hearing Ralph White, formerly of the Bad Livers, play a solo set on the banjo at a house concert, she took up the instrument herself, and kept up with it after she relocated to New York City to do graduate work.

Williamson quit school to pursue music full-time, and formed a short-lived band in New York called Rattlesnake before returning to Austin. She started writing songs and expanded her skills to include guitar and keyboards, and in 2011 she self-released a CD-R EP, Medicine Wheel//Death Songs. Williamson launched her own Brutal Honest label to issue her first full-length album, 2014's Native State, initially released in a limited pressing of 300 LPs on red, white, and blue vinyl meant to resemble the Texas flag. Brutal Honest issued Williamson's second album, Heart Song, in 2016.

As her reputation spread, she was approached by the established indie label Mexican Summer, which released her third album, 2018's Cosmic Wink and coincided with Williamson leaving Austin for Los Angeles, where she took inspiration in the energy and ambience of her new hometown. 2020's Sorceress was her most ambitious project to date, with the songs written in Los Angeles, the basic tracks recorded in New York City, and the overdubs and mixing done in Dripping Springs, Texas.

It was also around 2020 that Williamson underwent a difficult break-up with a longtime romantic partner and collaborator. The change, while painful, brought other opportunities. She formed the collaborative duo Plains with Waxahatchee's Katie Crutchfield and together they recorded 2022's Brad Cook-produced I Walked with You a Ways, an album of emotionally raw country songs. Equally fortifying tours followed, including stints with Weyes Blood, Kevin Morby, and José González. She also began splitting her time between Los Angeles and her native West Texas, where experiences like rescuing a dog by the side of the road and falling in love again continued to buoy her newfound sense of creative purpose. She returned to the studio with Cook and in 2023 brought all of the turmoil and change she experienced to bear on her fifth solo album, Time Ain't Accidental. ~ Mark Deming