The supergroup Monsters of Folk. (Autumn De Wilde/Monsters of Folk)

Forming a supergroup has long been considered one of the least cool things a group of prominent musicians can do. (I blame Damn Yankees.) But that didn't deter a cadre of contemporary indie-rock heroes that includes Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, Jim James of My Morning Jacket and M. Ward from joining forces as Monsters of Folk.

That the description "folk" is still in circulation a decade into the 21st century is remarkable given the titanic shifts in postwar popular music.

When asked by Spin magazine why they went with that – an homage of sorts to Monsters of Rock, a British heavy metal festival of the '80s and '90s – James had a facetious response: "All of the animal band names were taken." That's not entirely true – Hot Lemming and Wolf Casserole are still available. But James does point to the difficulty in finding a name that conveys an impression of the music on offer. The question is: is there anything "folk" about Monsters of Folk?

Judging by the group's debut disc, the answer is, not really. The '60s-orchestral-pop opener, God Knows (MOF Sincerely), and the shuffling country-rocker Whole Lotta Losin' are departures from any recognizable folk template. The easy-going single Say Please bears a resemblance to the handiwork of another fabled supergroup, the Traveling Wilburys. A few of Oberst's contributions (like Man Named Truth) are closer to the mark, due to his stylistic debt to '60s strummers like Phil Ochs.

While the group's name is too ironic to interpret as a sincere statement of intent, it does illustrate how much fuzziness has crept into the terminology. That the description "folk" is still in circulation a decade into the 21^st century is remarkable given the titanic shifts in postwar popular music. Folk music as an American form was mostly born out of the smattering of songs that immigrants, mostly of the British and Irish variety, brought to the New World. It was archived and synthesized by Alan Lomax, Harry Smith and Woody Guthrie in the '40s, and popularized by Pete Seeger and the Weavers in the '50s. (It's worth noting how the American folk lineage can be quite distinct from the British and Canadian ones – East Coast musical icon Stan Rogers continues to cast a big shadow over our nation's folkies.)

Bob Dylan transformed the potential for folk among baby-boomer listeners by first embracing and then separating the music from its more traditional modes, such as protest songs or story ballads. A more personal and autobiographical variety emerged in Dylan's wake. Folk music reached its peak of popularity in the States in the early '60s, thanks to such artists as Joan Baez and Peter, Paul & Mary. Since then, the tag has applied to a somewhat bewildering and increasingly international array of musical styles — although many in contemporary folk music circles insist that the modern variety requires some link to the traditions Guthrie set down.

It's doubly ironic that a group of indie-rockers chose Monsters of Folk as their moniker, seeing as the band members have explored different aspects of traditional American music on other recordings, like Bright Eyes' album I'm Wide Awake It's Morning (2005) or M. Ward's vividly rendered Post-War (2006). "I think we see the word 'folk' in maybe a larger definition of the word than a dude with an acoustic guitar," M. Ward told Spin. Unfortunately, Monsters of Folk is too varied to convey any sense of how these guys would define folk. Or maybe this is how folk is perceived by their fanbase – i.e., something that sounds mostly mellow, vaguely rootsy, sorta country and sorta pop.

Singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart. (Photo by Karl Walter/Getty Images)

The new album by Devendra Banhart, the bearded figurehead of what's been dubbed "freak folk," isn't much more useful in clearing up the confusion. When Banhart emerged at the beginning of this decade, he was the kind of musician that had long been banished from hipster circles: the scraggly hippie who liked to perform songs on an acoustic guitar while sitting cross-legged. Golden Apples of the Sun, a 2004 album of friends and like-minded acts that Banhart compiled for Arthur magazine, revealed that he was part of a new wave of almost-folkies. Acts like Vetiver, CocoRosie, Jack Rose and Joanna Newsom arrived on the scene, warbling along to acoustic instruments and citing previously obscure musicians (e.g., Vashti Bunyan, John Fahey, Bert Jansch) as influences.

Suddenly, folk was cool again, at least in some rings of the underground. As further evidence of the acceptance of acoustic, roots-based music to the latest generation of rock fans, consider how well Alexisonfire co-frontman Dallas Green has fared with his unabashedly folk-oriented side project City & Colour. Examples of this new manifestation often bear less resemblance to the Guthrie/Dylan model than the "anti-folk" strain that had a brief vogue in the '80s and '90s, after New York singer-songwriters like Lach and future Juno soundtrack star Kimya Dawson applied new brio to the ways of their earnest predecessors. Dawson has a sometimes goofy sensibility that's often self-conscious about folk's traditions.

Banhart's own trajectory epitomizes the freak-folkies' fondness for musical mutation, as the bare acoustic style of his early releases gave way to forays into blues, psychedelia and Brazilian tropicalia. He just released his major-label debut for Warner, What Will Be, and like Monsters of Folk, it's a wide-ranging and often entertaining disc. Unlike Monsters of Folk, it actually resembles folk music at times — songs like Walilamdzi show the delicacy and warmth Banhart is capable of.

The fact that Banhart doesn't have a place in the folk community – which sustains itself via magazines like Folk Roots and Sing Out!, along with a loose network of clubs and festivals worldwide – means that purists are still likely to cast a wary eye on him. But the boundaries of folk have been nothing if not elastic. Every generation since Woody Guthrie's has messed with folk's DNA to come up with beautiful monsters of its own.

Monsters of Folk and What Will Be are in stores now. Devendra Banhart plays Toronto on Nov. 27.

Jason Anderson is a writer based in Toronto.