5. Waxahatchee, Ivy Tripp [Wichita]
I had dismissed Waxahatchee as a humdrum, pensive folk operation until I wandered into their show at the Sinclair last May and thought, “Hey, this is pretty great, and I’ve been saying this band sucks for like two years. Oops!” Maybe I needed complete instrumentation and/or fancier production values absent on her earlier recordings to properly appreciate the wares of Katie Crutchfield, or maybe I was in a pissy mood the first time I heard Waxahatchee and my pissiness distorted my perspection. Or perhaps the imaginative yet unchallenging indie pop on Ivy Tripp unwittingly repackages Waxahatchee as a project with, surprisingly, quite a bit to offer listeners who started denouncing anything even almost identifiable as “folk” after Mumford and Sons came along.