Three women, three origin stories, one sound that feels like it grew up from the ground. The Little Mercies — Bronwyn Chelette, Shanice Richards, and Rosalee Walsh — bring old-time string band tradition somewhere it hasn't quite been before.

Their debut EP moves the way roots music always has: gathering what it finds. "I Won't Go" traces the Atlantic passage of Black musical tradition from field to juke joint, arriving not as lament but as declaration. "Rain and Snow" lifts the bones of a classic murder ballad and turns it outward — from one woman's story to a collective refusal. "The Harvest" is all fiddle and instinct, an original old-time tune that needs no words to say what it means.

At the center of it all is "Mending" — the one song all three wrote together, and it shows. You bring the melody and I'll find the harmony. That's the whole record, really. Music made in community, for keeps.