Mipso

North Carolina string band Mipso wove an array of outside influences into their traditional setup, surging into view during 2013 when their second album climbed high on Billboard’s bluegrass ranking. Intricate instrumental lines, stacked vocal harmonies, and immediately appealing tunes kept the quartet on that chart for the balance of the decade; Old Time Reverie reached the top spot in 2015 and Edges Run repeated the feat in 2018, while the group simultaneously gained traction in indie-folk circles and became a regular draw at festivals worldwide.

Jacob Sharp on mandolin, guitarist Joseph Terrell, and bassist Wood Robinson first crossed paths as students at UNC-Chapel Hill, trading ideas in casual sessions that sharpened their instrumental skills and shaped their close-knit vocal style. Still called the Mipso Trio at the time, they issued their 2012 debut Long, Long Gone, which merged Appalachian mountain traditions with strains of early country, jazz, bluegrass, and folk and included guest fiddle work from Libby Rodenbough. Steady live work followed, and after signing with Chapel Hill’s Robust Recordings they delivered Dark Holler Pop in 2013. By then shortened to Mipso, the album unexpectedly reached number eight on the Billboard bluegrass chart and lifted the band’s visibility. When Old Time Reverie appeared in 2015, Rodenbough had become a permanent member; the expanded lineup explored fuller, sometimes starker sonic colors. The record claimed the bluegrass summit and performed well on the folk chart, prompting an invitation to perform in New York’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade later that year.

Subsequent projects continued the band’s gradual shift: drums surfaced on several tracks of both 2017’s Coming Down the Mountain and 2018’s Edges Run, the latter securing their second bluegrass number one, yet the core pastoral-folk identity remained intact. In August 2020, ahead of their self-titled sixth album, they unveiled the single “Coyote,” a quiet meditation on the fleeting nature of life on the road.