Saving Country Music’s 2025 Breakout Artist of the Year

All the talk in music heading into 2026 is how catastrophic and disruptive AI will be on music creators. Much of the talk in 2025 was how the industry was curiously unable to launch any truly new major artists or stars, in country music or anywhere else. There are exceptions to these dilemmas—folks who just possess such a sheer amount of inarguable talent they can insulate themselves from these adverse trends and defy odds by doing things nobody else can, and no technology can replicate.

Up-and-coming bluegrass group Mountain Grass Unit from Birmingham, Alabama happens to be one of those outfits. Even calling them “up-and-coming” feels too quaint since they’ve been around since 2021, they’re already selling out venues left and right, and their skills so closely resemble mastery already, despite their relative young age. But as exciting and accomplished as they are right now, the sky is the limit on their upside potential, making them a surefire pick for the 2025 Breakout Artist of the Year.

Lead guitar player Luke Black and mandolin player/lead singer Drury Anderson make up the nucleus of the band. And even though these two enter 2026 like seasoned veterans, they just graduated from the Berklee College of Music in Boston in May. The second half of 2025 was really the band’s first opportunity to lean full bore into being professional musicians, even though they performed at places like DelFest and Winter Wondergrass back in 2024.

They’re joined by Sam Wilson on bass, and the band’s newest member, Josiah Nelson on fiddle, who also happens to be a music professor/instructor at East Tennessee State University. Together they form a formidable group of talent that has been lighting audiences on fire. They certainly made an impact at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in June.

When Saving Country Music posted one especially blazing run from Luke Black during Mountain Grass Unit’s now legendary set, it went viral, and then went viral again.

None other than Billy Strings himself took notice, especially after folks were tagging Strings and saying he had stiff competition coming up behind him. “Kinda rude of him to be this good honestly,” Strings piped up about Luke Black. “Luckily for me we’re on the same team.” That was a pretty big endorsement for Luke and Mountain Grass Unit to say the least.

Recently, Mountain Grass Unit’s entire set from Telluride was released on YouTube:

Then in September as part of the IBMA’s World of Bluegrass festival/conference, the paths of Billy Strings and Luke Black finally converged, with Black joining Strings on stage for a rendition of “Hello City Limits” at The Signal in Chattanooga.

Similar to Billy Strings, Mountain Grass Unit have that perfect blend of a strong traditional bluegrass foundation, with the fearlessness to take bluegrass beyond it’s conventional borders while still being tethered to the music’s roots. The legendary Tony Rice is often cited as being indicative of their sound, which makes sense since guitar player Luke Black cites Rice as a primary influence, specifically referencing Tony’s 1979 album Manzanita as a compass point.

Artists and bands like Mountain Grass Unit, East Nash Grass, Shadowgrass, Colorado’s Clay Street Unit, and East Kentucky’s The Creekers who recently signed a major label deal are the kinds of performers who couldn’t just survive whatever AI is about to wreak upon music, they might even excel in the post-AI environment.

It’s performers who can unplug, primarily rely on wood and wire to create their music, who can excel in the live context, and illustrate the pinnacle of human potential who will survive whatever the technology Apocalypse we’re staring into the teeth of has in store. Mountain Grass Unit certainly fits that bill, and ensures the future of bluegrass is in good hands.

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