Rated among the leading young mandolin players in America, Indiana-bred, Maine-dwelling Ethan Setiawan joins a band known as Fine Ground, made up of Boston-based associates, to produce what first sight will lead you to assume is a bluegrass project. But when you listen to Little Storms, while you'll indeed hear elements of that genre, overall this feels closer to a folk album in both traditional and modern senses. There are hints of classical and jazz, too.

You'll discern little emphatically Southern about it. Setiawan sings the songs in a relatively relaxed voice that, while certainly pleasing the ear, is far from hard driving, the adjective usually applied to the genre since bluegrass's early days. To my ears Fine Ground's inventive banjo player BB Bowness is only passingly of the Earl Scruggs school. Mostly, she's exploring a style that to me could be defined as clawhammer for the 21st century. Just sayin'. I'm not a musician, please understand, just a longtime listener.

In any event, the approach amounts to contemporary stringband music, performed by sophisticated artists versed in a range of rooted sounds, if we're lucky among the first hints of a re-emerging, reimagined folk revival. For all its artistry, Little Storms has the distinction of immediate appeal, in other words not demanding multiple listenings to appreciate. I think I was pretty much taken in by the third cut, Carolyn Kendrick's "Whiskey, Boys" an intriguingly original piece seemingly formed out of a fusion of the 15th-century ballad "The Riddle Song" and a 19th-century sea shantey. Not many bluegrass-tinted songs draw on marine metaphors, but Sam Clark & Yasmine Shelton's lovely "Ships at Sea" rises to the top of those that do.

"Ancient Grains" ("my contribution to the 'stomp' genre of bluegrass mandolin tunes," Setiawan says) is more melody-focused than the hard-hitting equivalents I associate with the celebrated Bill Monroe equivalents. Bill and his son James Monroe also covered Damon Black's trad-sounding "Tall Pines," as have other bluegrass masters such as Kathy Kallick and James King, making it the one cut most listeners who have stayed in the bluegrass lane will recognize. In Setiawan & Fine Ground's handling, though, it's notably less down-home and Southern; still, a sturdy song performed effectively.

Other notables include Connie Converse's "The Clover Saloon," concerning the fate of a hard-drinking cowboy, and Kate Wolf's "Across the Great Divide," which pops up unexpectedly as always to remind us of what a perfect song it is.

Let's hope Setiawan and his splendid outfit are only getting started.