Jill keeps an ever-changing list of free mp3s on her website. If you like Jill, and you should, then you should check out how she’s financing her next record: a fan-funded “telethon”.

$25 gets you an advance copy of the disc; $100 gets you that plus a t-shirt saying you’re a junior executive producer; for $1,000, Jill will write you your own theme song; and for $25,000, you can sing on the album.

Greg Graffin is best known as the lead singer of brainy punk stalwarts Bad Religion, but took a rather different direction on his solo album Cold as the Clay. Graffin instead has taken a dozen folk songs (about half originals, half traditionals), and presented some in straightforward folk form, some with rock touches. Don’t Be Afraid to Run is one of the latter, and my favorite off of the album.

I wish I knew more about Obadiah Parker, because this cover of Hey Ya is pretty darned terrific.

Or watch this amusing video mash-up:

At first I thought it might be unfair to describe Carbon Leaf by comparing them to another band (”kind of like Great Big Sea, minus the Newfie sea chanties, plus Appalachian folk, and with more obtuse lyrics”). Then I realized they’d both done a mad, uptempo rendition of the traditional Mary Mac, so why the hell not.

Their downloads page has literally dozens of free tracks. I’m most partial to The Boxer, American Tale and Aurora, but there are a lot of good songs there, so give ‘em a whirl.

Not every singer-songwriter appears on Jay Leno before her first album’s even been released, but such was the buzz surrounding Mindy Smith. She’s in that category of mellow female singer-songwriters that get bucketed into “country” but which I’d have called “folk-rock” instead (see also: Carpeter, Mary Chapin).

I was drawn in by Come to Jesus from the first moment I heard it on the radio. Her Photos & Music page includes a few other tracks such as Falling, Hurricane, and a cover of Dolly Parton’s Jolene.

David Goodrich is a guitarist extraordinaire. He’s played with an impressive list of Boston-area musicians (I first saw him backing up Tim Gearan) but has released two instrumental albums of his own.

His recordings page features five tracks, including three off his folk-inspired Accidentals of the West. The title track, Accidentals of the West, is terrifically catchy, as are New/Old Joe and Flew.

But the hidden treasure is his production page, featuring work he’s done production on. Tracks from Peter Mulvey, Tim Gearan, and others.

John Wesley Harding is an erudite singer-songwriter, somewhere between the Phil Ochs/Bob Dylan folk tradition and the Elvis Costello angry-young-man tradition.

He’s got a bunch of live mp3s on his Music page, including a great cover of Adam MacNaughton’s hilarious Hamlet, as popularized by Martin Carthy.

I’m not sure what genre to assign to Tears for Beers. They’re of the type “bands doing rock renditions of traditional folk songs”. I hesitate to call this “folk-rock”, since that makes me think of James Taylor, which this ain’t.

What it is: high-energy rock, including the Scottish mainstay Jacobites and the popular chanty Drunken Sailor. Many more, including some originals, on their Audio page.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the singer’s accent? They’re German. Dig that.