laura Marling

Listen to “Valentine,” the title cut on the latest album from Matador recording artist Snail Mail, and you feel transported back to the early years of Lollapalooza, if not earlier. The song opens with waves of ‘80s synth and staccato bursts of Police-style guitar, then segues into a crunchy power-pop chorus that Billy Corgan might have scripted. Snail Mail grew up in the D.C. suburbs as Lindsey Jordan. She is 23. Surely, she is not a Billy Corgan fan. You ask anyway. “I have a Smashing Pumpkins tattoo,” she replies. She holds it up to the Zoom camera. Spin the latest albums by Lindsey or Marissa Nadler or Shannon Lay, and you will hear the fruits of a modern singer-songwriter movement, a string of masterful recordings by young, mostly female artists who grew up listening to their parents’ ...