Anaïs Mitchell’s new album Hadestown is proof that music still has the power to surprise and delight. For starters, the guest list includes some pretty well-known names, including a certain Little Folksinger and a guy best known as Bon Iver. And it’s an honest-to-god album, the kind whose songs tell a story from beginning to end—specifically, the ancient Greek myth of the poet Orpheus and his doomed quest to rescue his wife Eurydice from the underworld. In Mitchell’s hands, the familiar saga is reimagined as unfolding in a version of the U.S. that simultaneously evokes our Depression-era past, the current financial disaster (though it was written before the stock market collapse), and a post-apocalyptic future. It’s a land where people hide behind walls in a misguided attempt to preserve their “freedom” and protect their riches.