Artist feature
The Deslondes
A New Orleans roots band who trade songs and voices the way a good string band trades solos — loose, generous, and unmistakably Southern.
Who they are
The Deslondes are an Americana and country-soul band from New Orleans, Louisiana, formed in the early 2010s. They take their name from Deslonde Street in the Lower Ninth Ward, and the city is stitched into their music — its rhythms, its mix of traditions, its easy way of letting genres bleed into one another. What sets the band apart is that it has no single frontman. The songwriting and the lead vocals are shared across the group, with the members trading off from song to song, so a record moves through several different voices and points of view rather than one.
Their sound
Their music is a loose, swampy blend of classic country, R&B and soul, rock and roll, and folk. It leans on acoustic and roots instrumentation but never sits still in any one style — a honky-tonk shuffle can slide into something that feels like a soul ballad, then into a rockabilly stomp, all within a single album. That restlessness is the point. The arrangements stay warm and unhurried, built on real interplay between players rather than polish, which gives the records the feel of a band in a room finding a song together.
Their songs and country-soul streak
Where the band really lives is in the songwriting. The Deslondes write the kind of soulful country songs that carry real weight without ever turning heavy-handed — songs about longing, home, and hard times that lean on soul and gospel phrasing as much as on country. It is music that leans into feeling, and listeners often reach for their country-soul ballads precisely because a searching, aching song can be strangely good for the soul: not a distraction from a mood but a way to sit inside it for a while. That emotional honesty — the sense that the saddest song in the room can also be the most comforting — is a big part of why the band has held such a devoted following, and why their music keeps turning up on playlists of the country songs people love most when they need to feel something.
Why roots fans should hear them
If you love bluegrass and old-time music, The Deslondes live in the same wider country: the deep well of Southern American roots music, where country, blues, gospel and folk have always shared the same soil. They are not a bluegrass band — there is no Scruggs-style banjo driving the rhythm — but they draw from the same sources, prize the same songcraft, and reward the same kind of listening. Their albums on New West Records have earned steady critical praise, and they have built their reputation the honest way, on the road and on festival stages, where the trading-off vocals and easy chemistry come fully to life.
Start with the bluegrass string band. Our guide to bluegrass instruments walks through the banjo, mandolin, fiddle and the rest — the acoustic roots that music like this grows out of.
How they fit the roots-music world
We spend most of our time here on banjos and bluegrass gear, but the reason any of it matters is the music it serves — a broad, tangled family of American roots styles that keep feeding one another. The Deslondes are a living example of that crossover: a New Orleans band who take country, soul and folk and make something new without losing the thread back to where those sounds came from. If you are exploring outward from bluegrass, they are a rewarding place to wander.