Blending his Nashville-honed straight country cred with a loose, fluid sensibility informed by jam-band legends, Donato has spent years honing his take on “cosmic country”—a little psychedelic, a little twangy, and endlessly listenable. With his debut, A Young Man’s Country, in 2020, Donato established that distinctive sound, drawing from The Byrds and the Grateful Dead on tracks like the wah-wah pedal-adorned “Fire on the Mountain” and “Justice,” a danceable tune that sounds ready for just about any honky-tonk. Building a following through lengthy live shows that build on the jam band tradition, Donato and his Cosmic Country band followed that up with a collection of covers that he got to know while playing at Nashville’s venerable Robert’s Western World, including the Jessi Colter classic “Why You Been Gone So Long” and the bluegrass standard “Fox on the Run.” Two more albums of originals, Reflector and Horizons, find the band offering more crowd-pleasing tunes with a live bent, from the Stagecoach-ready “Dance in the Desert” to the hazy “Another Dimension.”