The Unthanks
English folk group
The Unthanks (until 2009 called Rachel Unthank and the Winterset) are an English folk group known for their eclectic approach in combining traditional English folk, particularly Northumbrian folk music, with other musical genres. Their debut album, Cruel Sister, was Mojo magazine's Folk Album of the Year in 2005. Of their 11 subsequent albums, ten have received four or five-starred reviews in the British national press. Their album Mount the Air, released in 2015, won in the best album category in the 2016 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Their 2024 double album, In Winter, received a four-starred review in the Financial Times and a five-starred review in The Times.
Career
Rachel Unthank and the Winterset
Cruel Sister
Originally an all-female band, Rachel Unthank and the Winterset made their debut performance at Holmfirth Folk Festival on 7 May 2004 and launched their debut album Cruel Sister at the same festival venue the following year, on 11 May 2005. Cruel Sister received support from a number of DJs on BBC Radio 2 and was subsequently awarded Folk Album of the Year by Mojo magazine.
The Bairns
Their follow-up album, The Bairns, released on 20 August 2007, was nominated for the Best Album award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2008 and was runner-up for the 2008 Mercury Prize. The album debuted in the UK Top 200 Albums Chart at number 178 in the week after the Mercury Prize award ceremony. Reviewing The Bairns for BBC Music, Mel Ledgard described it as "an album with a cinematic quality, huge in dramatic atmosphere".
The public source identifies “The Unthanks” as english folk group. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Unthanks, English and folk.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3989799. VIAF identifies the subject as 156686049. The Library of Congress control number is no2010074575. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2005, 2015 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Unthanks” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.