It’s easy to slip into superlatives with the singer-songwriter Jenny Owen Youngs, who composes songs of insightful, sometimes dark, brilliance and clothes them in very accessible pop earworms.

“Fuck Was I” hit me on the head when I first heard it on a demo version of her Batten the Hatches album. This was just after she’d graduated from SUNY Purchase—where she’d recorded the album. She was then playing tiny coffeehouses (including one run by perceptive percussionist John Stuart in nearby Norwalk), but clearly destined for more. Given to wearing Girl Scout uniforms then, she was funny, quick, self-deprecating. And she appeared on my WPKN radio show and even went into the studio with me to record a version of “Drinking Song.”

Since then, Youngs’ music has been used on Weeds, Grey’s Anatomy, Nurse Jackie and BoJack Horseman, and she made four more fine albums. But maybe she’s best known for her podcast, Buffering the Vampire Slayer, running down, with Kristin Russo (her now former wife), every single episode (with Youngs’ accompanying original songs). She also did the X Files.  

Youngs’ latest album is Avalanche on Yep Rock, released near the end of 2023. I saw her play a lot of it solo at the newly reopened Iron Horse in Northampton, Massachusetts on February 20. She was characteristically hilarious, when she wasn’t singing, beautifully, her gorgeous songs. Here’s a new classic, “Knife Went In”: