THE exclamation marks that accompany Virginian country singer Devon Sproule’s spring album may suggest alarm, but the moods is balmy.

Sparse yet sophisticated songs, nurtured in a Northamptonshire studio with ducks and donkeys outside, blossom with wit and a sunny disposition.

Ubiquitous pedal steel player BJ Cole is always where it matters, and a desert blues cover of Black Uhuru’s Sponji Reggae is the loveliest of detours.

Lisa Hannigan was fired suddenly after seven years with Damien Rice, a short, sharp sacking that was just the spur the 28-year-old Dubliner needed to let her own “plinky plonky rock” songs breathe. She recorded them in two weeks, sewing the album sleeve designs with her mother.

A cottage industry, occasionally rough kind of folk-pop record, it puts you in mind of Tracey Thorn’s 1982 bedsit classic, A Distant Shore, albeit with more warmth and fur on its back.

Blue Roses is 21-year Laura Groves, from Shipley, West Yorkshire, and her debut album of folk melodramas was recorded on borrowed instruments in bedrooms, bathrooms and living rooms.

Echoes of Kate Bush, Shelleyan Orphan and The Sundays’ Harriet Wheeler do not prevent Groves’s more home-spun charms shining through, although these Blue Roses are yet to reach full bloom.

* Devon Sproule plays Pocklington Arts Centre on June 30, 8pm; box office 01759 301547.