This may be only Fowlis’s third album, but a fan club that includes Björk and Ricky Gervais attests to a talent that surpasses the folk traditions that nurtured it. If the heart of Uam is Fowlis’s diamond-cut Gaelic timbre, its intelligence is evenly divided between exquisitely understated arrangements and the choice of material. When all components come together — as they do on A Mhic Dhughaill ’ic Ruairidh — the results sound not so much written as excavated from the Hebridean terrain where she grew up.

(Spit & Polish; out now)