From Waxahatchee and Florry in the US to Brown Horse and Little Grandad in the UK, a wave of young songwriters are reinvigorating the subgenre’s earnest emotion and twang

‘It’s so important to talk about this before it’s gone,” says Francie Medosch, singer, guitarist and songwriter of the band Florry, “because it’s really a flash in the pan.” The flash she means is a brief moment where it feels as though on both sides of the Atlantic, scores of exciting indie bands are playing something that, without slavish copying, has plainly drawn inspiration from alt-country, the music that emerged in the US in the late 1980s and early 90s, when former punks such as Uncle Tupelo – featuring future Wilco co-founder Jeff Tweedy – and the Bottle Rockets picked up picked up fiddles, banjos and acoustic guitars.

In the UK, Brown Horse and Vegas Water Taxi have the weeping pedal steel, in the former case tied to something very heartland and in the latter paired with a very English indie sensibility. Westside Cowboy and Little Grandad both borrow from the spiky rootsiness of early Wilco, while Wyatt play slacker country rock. Over in the US, where there’s always going to be more of this sort of thing, you can point to the current indie-rock holy trinity of Waxahatchee, Wednesday and MJ Lenderman, plus Florry, Ratboys, Thomas Dollbaum, Fust, SG Goodman, Lily Seabird, Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band and more.

Bannau Brycheiniog, Wales
The traditional fire might be banned this year, but festivalgoers are treated by energetic performances by Four Tet, Tamikrest and Westside Cowboy

Driving towards the bucolic Welsh valley that’s home to the Green Man festival feels a little apocalyptic this year. Charred peat and grassland smoulder on the hillsides, the remnants of one of the 20 wildfires that blazed through south and west Wales the previous week. The dangerously dry conditions pose a problem for the festival organisers: the traditional closing ceremony, during which a towering effigy of the titular Green Man adorned with punters’ handwritten wishes is set alight, has been cancelled. A sensible decision, but one that left longtime festival-goers with a serious question: where would all those wishes go?

Then, the heavens open. Manchester quartet Westside Cowboy pack out the main stage arena on Friday afternoon, thousands of soggy cagoules bobbing along to the band’s charmingly ramshackle blend of British indie and amiable Americana. “We were over there last year,” grins vocalist and guitarist Jimmy Bradbury, gesturing towards the significantly smaller Rising stage. They’re clearly over the moon – and it’s infectious. To close the set, the band down instruments – save a guitar and a handheld drum – and gather round one mic for a rallying performance of In the Morning. The recorded version sounds like a lullaby, but here they transform it into a euphoric boot-stomping finale.