I have recently discovered a handful of young folk performers (in their 20s and 30s) in the San Francisco Bay area who are writing brillant original songs steeped in but not stifled by traditional sources. For the curious, they are AJ Roach, Jolie Holland, and Sean Hayes. While being influenced by the older traditions, they are pulling folk in a new direction and revitalizing it at the same time.

Currently they are unsigned and mostly undiscovered, yet are all attracting an audience through homemade recordings and their own web sites and word of mouth.

Got to thinking that this phenomenon may be playing out in other areas as well. What say you all? What are the best places to hear young, interesting, undiscovered folkies on the Internet? Any places you can hear a wide variety of songs without visiting the individual web sites? Or are there lists focused on that sort of thing?

Any young artists worth mentioning doing trad., neo-trad, alt folk, anti-folk, whatever you want to call it?

Good to see the folk music thing being handed off to a new generation.