Live In Concert from NPR's All Songs Considered Folgen

Joy Williams and John Paul White were strangers when they were paired up at a Nashville songwriting session in 2008, but you'd never know that now: Though not romantically involved, they perform their sweet, harmony-rich folk-pop songs with loving chemistry, often staring sweetly into each other's eyes. After attracting huge buzz at this year's SXSW music festival, the pair has gone on to be a large-scale cult item, thanks in part to the warmly winning songs on this year's Barton Hollow. The Civil Wars draw heavily from that album, and a few choice covers, when the band performs live at the 2011 Newport Folk Festival in Newport, R.I.

Last year, Boston's David Wax Museum couldn't play the Newport Folk Festival without first winning a contest. But talk about making the most of an opportunity: The band was everywhere at Newport last year, passing out CDs and signing bands up to its mailing list when it wasn't breaking spontaneously into song every chance it got. Since that breakthrough, the group has found a national audience for its recent album Everything Is Saved, which finds David Wax mixing the roots of American and Mexican folk music while Suz Slezak gives the band's music the percussive edge that can only come from a stick dragged rhythmically against a donkey's jawbone. Hear David Wax Museum perform live at the 2011 Newport Folk Festival in Newport, R.I.

Chris Thile enjoyed massive success at a very early age, selling millions with the prodigiously gifted bluegrass band Nickel Creek. But he's remained remarkably level-headed and creatively ambitious in the five years since the group's demise, exploring his more progressive leanings in Punch Brothers and teaming up with Michael Daves for a more traditional collection paying tribute to past bluegrass greats like Bill Monroe and fellow Newport artist Earl Scruggs. Sleep With One Eye Open, their album together, may look to the past, but make no mistake: This is blazingly intense music, and it shows live when they take the stage at the 2011 Newport Folk Festival in Newport, R.I.