Matt Lang’s soulful tunes, propelled by his husky voice, sound so naturally Nashville that it’s hard to believe he was born nowhere near the country music mecca. In fact, English isn’t even his first language. Born and raised in the small town of Maniwaki, Quebec, the francophone singer’s debut record dropped in 2015 after an appearance on the province’s version of The Voice. In 2018, he headed to Nashville to lay down the tracks for his first English-language record, even though he didn’t speak a lick of the language. The result—his bold self-titled EP—arrived later that year, with pedal steel licks filling out tracks like “Love Me Some You” and the romantic ballad “If.” In 2020, he released a second EP, More, which evoked sawdust dance floors on the red hot “Getcha” and doubled down on wordplay on the arena-sized “Water Down the Whiskey.” “In a Bar,” from the same record, is a fiddle-ripping drinking song that goes toe-to-toe with the best of ‘em—making it clear that Lang was destined to end up in Music City.