Jessie Baylin is a wanderer. A Jersey girl by birth, she attended music school in New York City and later moved to Los Angeles, where she launched her songwriting career as an indie-folk regular at the Hotel Cafe. Now settled in Nashville, she funnels her wanderlust into the gorgeous, pastoral songs that fill her third album. Little Spark may be an alt-country record on the surface, but Baylin dives deep into the genre’s roots, mining a mix of western blues, Laurel Canyon folk, and 1970s singer-songwriter pop. String arrangements rub shoulders with pedal steel guitars, and girl group harmonies – most of them supplied by The Watson Twins, in their best cameo performance since Jenny Lewis’ Rabbit Fur Coat – echo alongside Baylin’s country-cabaret croon. “Yuma,” a western ballad set to a bossa nova beat, even sounds a little Brazilian. For all its globetrotting variety, Little Spark is the most cohesive thing Baylin’s ever done. The songs fit tog...