After a dizzying five-year span that saw the release of two stunning, eclectic albums (Hard Won and Vanity, which drew praise from the likes of Billboard and Rolling Stone) — followed by appearances at AmericanaFest, the Newport Folk Festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and SXSW, and tours with Iron and Wine, Son Little, and Adia Victoria — Lizzie No found herself at the forefront of a new vanguard of genre-defying artists. Her new album, Halfsies (Thirty Tigers / Miss Freedomland), finds No situated among her peers while still searching for freedom — freedom from the constraints of categorization, sure, but more importantly, freedom from the depths of her own personal despair and from an increasingly violent and nightmarish American cultural and political landscape.

On Halfsies, No’s writing is beautifully intricate, the personal and the political folding into each other as naturally as the patchwork of influences that inform the album’s eleven tracks. The exploration of the relationship between individuality and belonging that informs Halfsies likewise informs No’s work as co-host of the Basic Folk podcast, where she has interviewed artists from Ben Harper to Valerie June about their places within the lineage of those who came before them, as musicians, activists and community members. That synthesis of personal and political courses through No’s songs, her identity as a writer owing as much to her musical influences as it does to her activism (an outspoken activist and civil rights advocate, No was recently named President of the Abortion Care of Tennessee Board of Directors).

“Toni Cade Bambara said, ‘the role of the artist is to make revolution irresistible,’” No says, recalling the writer, filmmaker and activist, whose work loomed large over the writing of Halfsies. “I think about those words all the time. Make revolution irresistible.” With Halfsies, Lizzie No aims to do just that.