The 2025 Grammy nominations are here, yielding the usual amount of snubs, surprises, and a few WTF moments. Then there’s the genuinely awesome picks, like the fact that Katie Crutchfield, the indie musician who performs as Waxahatchee, has finally received a nomination.
To be clear, being categorized as an “indie musician” doesn’t necessarily mean artists like Crutchfield have been historically shut out of the Grammys. Singer-songwriters like Phoebe Bridgers, Japanese Breakfast, and Arlo Parks have received nods for Best New Artist, and this year brings nominations for first-timers like Clairo (Best Alternative Album for Charm) and Madi Diaz (Best Folk Album for Weird Faith, and Best Americana Performance for the Kacey Musgraves duet “Don’t Do Me Good“). But Crutchfield’s nomination for Best Americana Album for the excellent Tigers Blood feels like a big moment nonetheless.
Crutchfield has been in the industry for more than 15 years, starting the band P.S. Eliot with her twin sister Allison in 2007. She’s been releasing albums as Waxahatchee (the name of a creek she grew up near in Alabama) since her raw 2012 debut, American Weekend, so she’s been eligible for a Grammy for well over a decade. And after a string of incisive, intense indie rock albums (2013’s Cerulean Salt, 2015’s Ivy Tripp, and 2017’s Eye in the Storm), Crutchfield went back to the drawing board and completely changed up her sound.
The result was 2020’s extraordinary Saint Cloud, one of the greatest albums of the pandemic era that saw Crutchfield steering away from rock and leaning into Americana — a sound with deep ties to her southern upbringing, making it a natural transition that didn’t feel forced. The album, the first record she made after she quit drinking, sparkled with woodsy, acoustic melodies (“Can’t Do Much”) and intricate songwriting (“Arkadelphia”), and was consistently hailed throughout those dark times. “I’ve become so obsessive about people like Lucinda Williams, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris,” she told me in 2020. “All these country powerhouse women. I wanted to step into that power a little bit.”
This year, Tigers Blood expanded on that sound to excellent effect, delivring highlights like the lakeside banger “Three Sisters” and spellbinding stunner “The Wolves.” (There’s also the knockout “365” on here, not to be confused with another very good “365” to come out of 2024.) “The most meaningful two records that I’ve made have been Saint Cloud and Tigers Blood,” she told us earlier this year.
Though the Grammys are notorious for swinging and missing, shutting Saint Cloud out of the 2021 awards was a noticeable loss. So when Crutchfield followed it up with Tigers Blood, it was anybody’s guess how the Recording Academy would react. Thankfully, they’ve finally come through on giving Crutchfield the recognition she deserves — not that she ever needed it.
“I’m so used to [the industry] changing, because it’s the only thing that the music business has done,” she said. “I tried to have this tone in those songs that’s sort of like, there’s whispers of emotion, but it’s also kind of dry and just naming some things. I think you have to try to find some sort of comfort in the discomfort.”
