Some days, you'd almost think it's worth getting out of bed. Lately, I've found, those days include those during which the prospect of hearing the music of Kacy & Clayton and the Locust Honey String Band looms. Together, these discs attest to the continuing vitality of traditional music -- meaning, for one thing, that "folk music" may be returning to its original meaning, which is not rootless singing-songwriting.

The current British revival, launched in the 1990s (thanks in good part to Eliza Carthy's extraordinary efforts and talents), continues apace. A body of evidence hints that something of the same may be happening in North America, not -- of course -- in the pop-music mainstream but at least on edges no longer ignorable. The present CDs are by young people, but the music they make doesn't betray that. The depth and maturity on display are impressive.

This seems especially so on The Day is Past & Gone, its title evoking the autumnal mood of most of the 10 songs, the work of cousins Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum, residents of rural Saskatchewan. Kacy, the singer, lays claim to a dark alto, which she uses so effectively that I defy any listener to figure out, from its sound alone, that she is barely in her mid-teens. Yet she sings, shockingly, convincingly and unreasonably, lines such as "now my hair has turned to silver, my aged bones are weary and worn" (from their self-composed hymn "The Downward Road"). Kacy's handling of the much-traveled lyric "I am a poor soldier and far from my home" borders on a kind of emotional perfection; for one moment, you think you don't need to know anything else, ever. Then, again, a can't-miss line, it packs a wallop wherever it appears, here at the end of a lovely reading of the 19th-century "Pretty Saro." Substitute anything you like for "poor soldier"; one notably heart-ripping variant (recorded by Eliza Carthy among others) puts "blind fiddler" in that space.

Day features six traditional songs, two of them Child ballads, as well as one semi-traditional ("The Dalesman's Litany," a poem by a known author set to a folk melody; I suspect Kacy & Clayton took their inspiration from the Tim Hart version), and three originals in styles indistinguishable from the others. Of these last, the above-cited "Downward Road" is my favorite, but there is nothing whatever lacking in "Wood View," reminiscent of the Carter Family, and "Rocks & Gravel," not to be confused with the traditional song. The cut that appears -- deservedly -- to have caught general attention is their shattering inhabitation of "Green Grows the Laurel." All movement ceases around it.

Clayton has a whole lot to do with the success of this album, contributing harmonies (subtle ones; you have to listen closely) along with deceptively intricate, not-so-simple guitar arrangements; he also brings autoharp, fiddle and pump organ to the show. The results repay no end of listenings, always the test of the strongest and most enduring music. The Day is Past & Gone surely answers to that characterization. If an encore is even possible, I don't know whether to look forward to it or fear it.

Based in Asheville, North Carolina, the three members of the Locust Honey String Band, all women, are a few years older -- in their 20s, so the album photo indicates -- than Kacy & Clayton. (The liner material is not entirely clear on whether the band comprises two more members, both male, but their website identifies the band as "three-piece" and "female.") The Locust Honeys' sound is earthier, bowing to mountain music and early country -- though, let us be clear, this is not a country band by the ordinary definition -- yet hardly less thrilling.

"Never Let Me Cross Your Mind" -- the title lifted from the traditional "Columbus Stockade," done here in a bluesy arrangement -- is not without the occasional bluegrass banjo sound but is never a bluegrass record. Like the best neotraditional performers, the Locust Honeys seamlessly, subtly incorporate modern influences into their deeply rooted sound. Perhaps that's nowhere more colorfully in evidence than in their rendering of "Henry Lee," a murder ballad (Child #68, titled there "Young Hunting"), put to a melody by Australian rocker Nick Cave.

Even more strikingly, the band re-envisions honkytonk songs associated with George Jones, Kitty Wells and Skeeter Davis as older and more traditional than their history attests. The Davis hit (written by Cecil Null) "I've Forgotten More Than You'll Ever Know," played as a kind of carnival waltz, feels like something you've never heard before, and you'll be grateful that it now sounds in your ear. The program is rounded out with fiddle tunes, Carter Family songs and three originals by band member Chloe Edmonstone. Exciting stuff. I think, however, that the version of the Carters's "Righten That Wrong" is a tad stiff; maybe it needed more work before it was studio-ready.

Even so, this is as accomplished and entertaining as any oldtime album I've heard so far this year. The Locust Honeys make the old sound new and the new sound old, putting forth joy and surprise all the while.