Sara Petite Band (usa)

An outlaw country headliner whose music reaches far beyond the genre's borders, Sara Petite has built an award-winning career with songs that owe as much to the rock & roll roadhouse as they do the honky-tonk.

Hers is a raw, rough-edged version of American roots music, delivered by a five-time International Songwriting Competition finalist who's spent nearly two decades calling her own shots. Sara has no interest in chasing trends. She's too busy chasing the muse instead, earning a wide range of accolades — including Top 40 success on the Americana charts, international airplay, and more than a half-dozen trophies from the San Diego Music Awards — along the way.

The Empress, her seventh record, marks a return to the intersection of country twang and roots-rock bang. It's a place Sara knows well, and she sketches its dimensions in sharp detail. These 11 songs take place in dive bars, trailer parks, the throes of passion, and the feedback loop of addiction, with Sara embodying her characters fully. From the heartbroken narrator of "The Mistress" — an old-school country/soul ballad about a lover's affair with alcohol, punctuated by pedal steel and electric piano — to the hell-raising hillbilly heroine of "Bringin' Down the Neighborhood," she maintains a strong female perspective, celebrating the full range of womanhood along the way. The Empress is an album for all genders, stocked with songs that tackle the universal struggles we all face. Even so, its central heroes are Joan of Arc, Mary Magdalene, and other woman who, like Sara, have pushed against imbalances in society for the sake of fairness.