Americana literary songsmith Karen Jonas’s sixth LP, The Restless (out Mar. 3), is a dark alt-country exploration of vulnerability. Each song is a confession that lands somewhere between nostalgia and doom. This mix of playful longing and earnest heartbreak crescendos into B-side opener “Rock the Boat,” which leaves Jonas prepared to walk straight into a river. The Restless is a visceral experience: you can feel the “lace and velvet” and taste “the bite of bourbon” on your lover’s tongue. “The record tells a story, but it isn’t linear,” Jonas says. “There are throughlines: this collection of dreamy, raw, romantic, and ill-fated stories. It’s important to me that the songs don’t judge the stories, they just dig in, leaving you to draw your own conclusions.”
