Rhiannon Giddens brings history, community and the simple pleasure of musicians playing together into the same room on Hope Is The Thing With Feathers, her new album that draws together many of the musical threads she has followed throughout her remarkable career.

Co-produced by Giddens and longtime collaborator and bandmate Dirk Powell, the album was recorded at The Cypress House in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with an intentionally stripped-down approach. The musicians largely played live, with few overdubs, while studio chatter, footsteps and other sounds from the sessions were allowed to remain. The result places the listener close to the performances and emphasizes the interaction between the players.

That sense of connection runs throughout an album inspired by people coming together and finding strength in one another. Giddens and Powell wrote four of its songs, including “Carolina Rain,” built around banjo and fiddle and a story of love and money. “Wish In Vain” turns toward the global refugee crisis, with Giddens imagining the experience of being separated from home and the people one loves.

Elsewhere, Giddens continues her lifelong exploration of the people and traditions that helped shape American music. She offers a spare reading of North Carolina legend Elizabeth Cotten’s “Freight Train,” along with Ola Belle Reed’s “High On A Mountain” and “Going Home” by Indigenous singer, songwriter, storyteller and activist Pura Fé. Traditional songs “Cluck Old Hen” and “Walk With Me” are also included, with the latter featuring Giddens singing alongside her sister.

The selections make Hope Is The Thing With Feathers feel particularly personal. Giddens has spent much of the past two decades tracing the intertwined histories behind folk, blues, country and roots music while bringing overlooked musicians and traditions into a wider conversation. Here, that scholarship remains important, but the music itself stays front and center.

Across Hope Is The Thing With Feathers, Giddens connects those histories to something immediate: voices, strings, rhythms and people responding to one another in real time. It’s an album built around the idea that music can preserve where we came from while giving people something to share in the present.