Playlist: Parents introduced singer-songwriter to roots music

one I knew I didn’t want to take it too far. The whole point was to have it be closer to a true expression of just me. I wanted it to sound like how the songs were born into the world.”

The less is more approach worked. Jarosz swept up a pair of Grammys earlier this year for best folk album and best American roots performance.

In a sense, “Undercurrent” plays almost like an introduction to Jarosz, even though she’s been performing and recording for the majority of her 25 years. Her interest in American roots music started with her parents, who played the progressive bluegrass band Hot Rize around the house in Wimberley when she was young. She borrowed a family friend’s mandolin, and says, “there was no looking back after that. Music became the central focus of my life. I got a mandolin of my own for Christmas. And I knew, ‘This is what I want to do.’ ”

Along the way, she picked up guitar and banjo. Jarosz was still in high school when she made “Song Up in Her Head” her first album. She headed to Boston, where she spent her first real winter. There Jarosz juggled a contemporary improvisation major with recording “Follow Me Down” in 2011 and “Build Me Up From Bones” in 2013. After graduation she moved to New York, where she’s been the past three years.

“I was inspired by having some alone time, some solitary time, really for the first time,” Jarosz says.

That solitude permeates the album, putting Jarosz in a contemplative space to write.

“What does it mean to be lost?” she sings on “Take Another Turn.” “What does it mean to be lonely?”

The album’s deeper queries are offset by bright and hopeful imagery: fresh-cut grass, the occasional blue sky, an open road.

“I was aware that a lot of the record sounded darker, with a more melancholy feeling,” Jarosz says. “So that was my way of dealing with that. You need a few moments of brightness and hope to balance everything out, right?”