Billy Strings

Billy Strings picked up guitar as a kid in Michigan and turned into one of the fastest flatpickers anybody's ever seen, but what keeps people coming back is how he writes. He came up through bluegrass — playing with mandolinist Don Julin, then cutting records that stretched the form until it barely held — and songs like "Dust in a Baggie" and "Turmoil & Tinfoil" deal honestly with the addiction and hard living he watched growing up. By the time Home won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album, he was filling rooms that bluegrass acts don't usually fill, pulling the genre somewhere new without letting go of it.