It’s been over a decade since BettySoo released her last solo LP, 2014’s wrenchingly beautiful When We’re Gone, but it’s not like the songwriter hasn’t been busy. Aside from her exceptional supergroup team-up with Rebecca Loebe and Grace Pettis in Nobody’s Girl, she’s become the right hand of James McMurtry. The local songwriter’s upcoming fifth album, If You Never Go Away, mixes her remarkable vocal range across an array of pop and roots songs that blister defiantly bright against dark times. BettySoo drops in-store at Waterloo ahead of her official release show at Sagebrush on the 19th with McMurtry and Restos. – Doug Freeman