Sacramento public radio wraps a day of local news with a visit from Alasdair Fraser and family, which is the correct way to end any programme. Skip ahead past the earlier segments if you only came for the fiddle; nobody will judge.

Chris Thile and company returning to a Connecticut college stage is the sort of news that justifies the whole favourite-artists list. Storrs is a long way from Penang, but a Punch Brothers date on the calendar is still worth knowing about, if only to imagine the Bach-to-breakdown setlist.

Watchhouse on a hometown bill with Hiss Golden Messenger, Tift Merritt and Karly Hartzman reads like a short history of North Carolina's roots scene on one stage. That they were doing it to get out the vote for Roy Cooper's Senate run is a fine use of four-part harmony: Carrboro's finest, putting their voices to work for the ballot box.

Look at that roster: Stuart Duncan, Michael Cleveland, Jerry Douglas, Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle, Edgar Meyer and more on one stage. The studio album already won a Grammy; this captures the night they played it straight through at the Ryman. Plenty here for anyone who follows the Punch Brothers end of the pool.

Alasdair Fraser coming to a Northeast Kingdom arts centre is exactly the sort of small-town show that makes New England folk life so good. The Scottish fiddle master has been a cornerstone of the Celtic revival for decades. If you can't be in St. Johnsbury, at least it's a nudge to put on one of his records with Natalie Haas.

New Laura Cortese means it goes in, no committee vote needed. The fiddler and songwriter behind the Dance Cards, long a fixture of the Boston scene, has a new record out, and here is a review to read before putting it on.

Cello and fiddle, two sisters, and decades of playing in each other's pockets. Brittany you know from Hawktail and Crooked Still, Natalie from her long partnership with Alasdair Fraser; this is the two of them together again on a second duo album.

Live write-ups are the next best thing to being in the room, and the Birchmere is about as good a room as American folk has. Aoife on 12 October, with DC duo the Sweater Set warming things up.

Undercurrent was the record that won Jarosz her first Grammys, and a decade on she is taking it back on the road. This profile catches her on the California leg, looking back over the career so far.

Fresh off a Grammy for Wild and Clear and Blue, the trio put out a record of what they sound like in a room, which is where three-part harmony either holds or doesn't. Aoife O'Donovan walks through the songs and her recent guest turns. A little older than our usual news, included here simply because it's lovely.

Scottish fiddle and cello shouldn't make this much rhythm between them, but Fraser and Haas have been proving otherwise for a quarter of a century. The review singles out Haas's writing, which is worth noticing if you know her mainly as the engine under Fraser's tunes. An August review, here as a bit of decoration.

An Orkney fiddler, a grim Scottish ballad and a Boston-heavy band of players, which makes it a neat bridge between two of this feed's favourite places. Listen for how the strings carry the story while the voices stay plain. She animated the video herself, too.