It started almost as a joke. When Julien Baker and Mackenzie Scott (who records under the name TORRES) met backstage for the first time after a show in Chicago eight years ago, their small talk veered toward their love of country music. A few years later, as a lark, Scott suggested they make a record in the style of Willie and Waylon. “I was worried that Julien would say no, and I cannot stand rejection,” Scott says. “So I framed it as, ‘Wouldn’t that be hilarious if we made a country record?’ And Julien was like, ‘Oh, hell yeah, I’m gonna send you some demos.’ Well, in that case, I was totally serious.”

It’s a good thing she asked: Because thirty-nine seconds into the sparse ballad “Dirt”—the opening track of Send a Prayer My Way—a delicate pedal steel appears, and the two lock into spine-tingling harmonies that set the tone for a stunning collaboration. Baker and Scott are two of the most emotionally impactful singer-songwriters of the past ten years, with Baker known for her dynamic work as a solo artist and as one-third of the Grammy-winning trio boygenius, and Scott for her fearless mix of searing rock, earthy folk, and squiggly electronics.

That the two would click perhaps isn’t surprising. Both hail from the South—Baker from Memphis; Scott from Macon, Georgia—and were raised in ultrareligious households. Both also identify as members of the LGBTQ community and grew up struggling with their identities. Musically, Baker absorbed a lot of Merle Haggard and George Jones while visiting her mother’s family in East Tennessee. For Scott early on, it was church music and the nineties country she heard in her brother’s and sister’s cars, with a few “secular” CDs allowed as she got older. “I recognize in Julien that thing that I have, which is always sort of trying to carve out a different way of doing things,” Scott says. “Not just being queer sexually but queer in the larger sense of just being at odds with the environments that we were in.”

There aren’t any honky-tonk rave-ups on Send a Prayer My Way. The album unfurls at a light trot, but in true country tradition, it includes songs about alcohol, heartbreak, and just trying to get by. Baker’s vocals on “Dirt” wrestle with addiction—she has been open about her own battle with substance abuse. “Spend your whole life getting clean / Just to wind up in the dirt,” she sings. Scott numbs her loneliness at the corner bar in the heart-tugging “Bottom of a Bottle,” as the pair’s harmonies flutter angelically overhead. In the folky twang of “Tuesday,” one of the album’s centerpieces, Scott laments the dissolution of a potential relationship because the other woman’s mother disapproved. It’s a song she had attempted to write for years. “Every time I tried, it came out as stupid young person stuff,” she says. “But finally getting it out made me feel much better, like I never [have to] think about that experience anymore.”

Despite the early connection in Chicago, Baker and Scott hadn’t spent much time together in person prior to the recording sessions in Marfa, Texas. But by the second day, they sensed something special was happening. Baker plays various string parts on “Tuesday,” layering them over Scott’s loneliness. “I put a freaky Dobro part over the song while she’s baring her soul in one of the most difficult experiences that has ever happened to her,” Baker says. “If she didn’t like it, I trusted she would tell me.”

Still, it was a big step for them to become vulnerable with each other, given that they’re both admittedly guarded. As they traded stories, their conservative upbringings and shared struggles came to the fore and turned into the bones of the album. The sessions lasted nearly two weeks, with a follow-up stint in Brooklyn because Baker would often take the sound files and, usually around 3:00 a.m. when she couldn’t sleep, tweak a vocal part or, say, add a banjo solo on a track like the dreamy “Downhill Both Ways.” But the words didn’t need much polishing. “We had to ensure that the lyrics were bulletproof,” Scott says. “You can’t be corny, because people can smell insincerity, especially in a country song.”

More New Music: Mandolin Phenom Sierra Hull Spreads Her Wings

In the five years since Sierra Hull’s last album, the mandolin wiz joined Sturgill Simpson’s bluegrass band and collaborated with Béla Fleck, Devon Allman, and Alison Krauss. That experience shows on A Tip Toe High Wire, where her songwriting rises to meet her musicianship. The mandolin fireworks are still there, but on highlights like “Spitfire” and the funky opener, “Boom,” she lets the soaring melodies and introspective lyrics take center stage.