Typically, bluegrass music conjures up a mental image of men with long beards, one strumming a tin-can banjo, on the front porch of a holler shanty.

Flatt Lonesome is not typical.

Seeing two of the band’s members—and husband and wife—Paul and Kelsi Harrigill in a Murfreesboro coffee shop setting, they don’t stand out as talented bluegrass musicians. In fact, they look like a couple of clean-cut hipster kids, who may fit in better with the indie scene than the bluegrass game. But with more than 50 shows, including the upcoming Lamar County Bluegrass Festival in Purvis, Miss., on March 13–14, planned for the year and a new album in the works, the Middle Tennessee-based Flatt Lonesome is earning its recent title as the 2014 International Bluegrass Music Association’s Emerging Artist of the Year.

In a time when newer bands in the roots movement are leaning toward “newgrass” tropes, the young Flatt Lonesome, which formed in 2011, has that traditional acoustic sound but with a modern feel that’s different from the older mountain-music sound.

Kelsi Harrigill said Lester Flatt, one of the most respected traditional bluegrass musicians, inspired the “Flatt” part of their name, but the “Lonesome” part of their name comes from the band just thinking that was a good bluegrass word.

“Folk and Americana are bigger now,” Paul Harrigill said concerning Flatt Lonesome’s success. “People have an ear for it now.”

Agreeing on a direction and cohesive style isn’t hard for Flatt Lonesome, since the band consists of siblings Charli Robertson, Buddy Robertson and Kelsi Harrigill, along with Kelsi’s husband Paul Harrigill and close friends Dominic Illingworth and Michael Stockton. Both Paul and Kelsi believe that the family connection makes Flatt Lonesome a stronger band.

In fact, the group’s successful chemistry can be showcased by the fact that their record label, Mountain Home, recognized their talent immediately, and rather than produce a planned EP, they recorded an 11-track album in four days that ended up being Flatt Lonesome’s self-titled 2013 debut, according to Paul Harrigill.

“For a record label to put that much faith in someone that no one had heard of is huge [for us],” Kelsi Harrigill said.

After the success of their first album and their earlier performances, Flatt Lonesome was nervous about their continued success in the bluegrass field. They felt that people expected them to fail.

“That’s the scary thing,” Kelsi Harrigill said. “When you’re not the new kid on the block, you’re not cute anymore.”

Fortunately, Flatt Lonesome’s second album, Too, was warmly received, with critics like Daniel Mullins of Bluegrass Today saying the band avoided the dreaded “sophomore slump,” and the family band has emerged both in the bluegrass charts and on the festival circuit; the band has even picked up a handful of awards and nominations, including a win for “I’m Blue” in the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at MerleFest 2014. In the end, though, awards and charts don’t matter, because it’s all about the music for Flatt Lonesome.

“We’re still just having a blast, and we’re still just playing music,” Kelsi Harrigill said.

For more information on tour dates and tickets, visit flattlonesome.com.