Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

On paper, pairing a complex rock icon with a bluegrass-country torchbearer may look like an awkward fit. Still, with the release of their 2007 joint album Raising Sands, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss proved just how perfect this unlikely dynamic can be. Plant, who became one of popular music’s biggest stars as the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, met the renowned fiddler as part of a Lead Belly tribute concert, where the two struck up a quick friendship. Despite their noticeable stylistic differences, Plant and Krauss share many common influences, including classic rockabilly and blues, evident in the music they created together on the Grammy-winning album. More than 15 years after their initial collaboration, Krauss and Plant reunited in 2021 for the album Raise the Roof, which proved that the magic they created on their first album was anything but a fluke. Simply put, contemporary roots music doesn’t get much better than this.