Pam Tillis

Mel Tillis' daughter returns with her 11th album, and it could be her most rootsy work yet (a far cry from 1983's Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey). With Rhinestoned, she plants her boot heels firmly in the new traditional sound, but her songs borrow from the bedrock of bluegrass, folk and old-timey twang. Her cover of Lisa Brokop's playful "Band in the Window" has a warm, '70s honky-tonk feel, while the Leslie Satcher-penned "That Was a Heartache" unfolds a tragically romantic narrative more weepy than the watery pedal-steel notes.