It’s always tempting to call a younger, up and coming artist with an astonishing talent the “new” someone or another. Usually when it’s a female performer with an acoustic guitar, the facile comparison—indeed the _default_ comparison—is Joni Mitchell, but that’s not what I’m feeling with Madi Diaz, a 25-year-old Nashville-based singer-songwriter who is considered one of that musical mecca’s best kept secrets.

Within a sort of thoroughly modern “Americana” context, Diaz and creative partner Kyle Ryan write songs which spring from a pure pop idiom. Hear them once, you’ll never forget them. Diaz’s lyrics are not about abstract subjects, they’re very specific feminine observations of life and relationships. She’s singing about herself—or at least she often writes in the first person—and it can be very powerful, plaintive and heartbreaking. If you married Carly Simon’s knack for the catchy, confessional, pop hit with the DNA of the legendary Anthology of American Folk Music box set, the result of that union would be Madi DIaz’s music.

Madi Diaz, it’s also worth noting, was a student at the School of Rock (both her father and brother are part of the school’s faculty) and first achieved notice as one of the lead teenage protagonists of Don Argott’s 2005 documentary Rock School. As Madi admits, “It’s embarrassing enough to have pictures of you when you’re 15 or 16 years
old; I have an entire doc.”

Her new album is called Plastic Moon.

In this live session recorded at SXSW, Madi Diaz and Kyle Ryan perform “If You Only Knew,” “Johnny” and “Love You Now.”