Decades into their career, the Indigo Girls still amaze conventional pundits with their ability to grow and thrive no matter what the state of the music industry is at any given point. On their 14th studio album, the Grammy-winning folk-rock duo of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers deliver with Beauty Queen Sister a beautifully crafted batch of songs that revel in spirited simplicity.

Beauty Queen Sister is the fourth Indigo Girls album released on IG Recordings, (distributed by Vanguard Records) the independent label that Ray and Saliers launched after putting out nine albums on Epic Records and one (2006’s widely acclaimed Despite Our Differences) on Hollywood Records. While the loss of major-label spending power might cripple less accomplished artists, both Ray and Saliers find that their tightened budget actually feeds the album-making process. “Nowadays we need to record much more quickly, so there’s no time to belabor every little decision like we did in our earlier years,” says Ray. “We just put our heads down and throw all our emotion into it and it’s magical—the heart rules our performance more than the head.”

On Beauty Queen Sister, a stunning 13-song selection touches on topics as disparate as the 2011 Egyptian revolution (in Ray’s plaintive “War Rugs,” featuring guest vocals by singer-songwriter Lucy Wainwright Roche), the ins and outs of the music industry (“Making Promises,” a defiant, guitar-driven banger also authored by Ray), and the recent massive deaths of Arkansas red-winged blackbirds (“Able to Sing,” in which Saliers cleverly swipes a lyric from the English nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence” to lend the track a slightly whimsical feel). Tackling such weighty matters as tenderly as each intimate love song, Beauty Queen Sister grips from the get-go and crests at the epic “Yoke.” With its centerpiece of hauntingly urgent strings (supplied by violinist Luke Bulla) and a gorgeously mournful