A reformed wild child, in recent years Kate Vargas has traded the party for meditation, yoga, clean eating and a renewed focus on what she values most—her music. The New Mexico-raised, NYC-based artist is building ever more mindfully on her sound, and the music press is taking notice, Vargas receiving praise from a variety of respected outlets including Billboard, NPR, and the Huffington Post, the latter assessing, “There is an unlimited amount of potential in this superstar on the rise.”

Vargas has packed houses from Ireland’s Westport Folk and Bluegrass Festival to The Troubadour in London, The Mansion on O Street in Washington D.C. to New York’s Bowery Electric. Her recent release, For The Wolfish & Wandering (out July 27), features her singular folk-style storytelling. The songs are grounded in a darkly melodic, reverb-washed sonic palette of dreampop, dusty folk and junkyard blues, all carried by Vargas’ rough-hewn vocals and guitar playing. In equal measure, she channels a surprising array of artists, from Tom Waits and 16 Horsepower to Lana Del Rey and K. Flay.