If you wired up Jason Mraz to one of those eyeball-clamp machines from Clockwork Orange and made him watch 24 hours of non-stop Grand Ole Opry footage, but with the sound set on Usher, you’d probably end up with Mat Kearney. The Oregon born and Nashville-based singer-songwriter went around three years without a new album, quietly withdrawing from major label support while he dealt with first-time fatherhood, up until his recent self-released sixth studio album, CrazyTalk. It’s basically a series of essays on love, and the different ways we let it affect our lives, for worse as much as better.

Sampling the tracks reveals a somewhat rustic Americana artist raised in the era of hip-hop, one who’s gradually adding more layers and accents to his sound, with bits of jazz and reggae that he rounds off smoothly with the breathy, soulful voice of a singing poet. A good example is “Better Than I Used To Be,” lyrically your basic seventies power-of-love ballad, but spun into streaming gold with the magic digital touch of Madonna and Selena Gomez producer AFSHeeN. “Kings & Queens,” co-written with Judah Akers of Judah & the Lion, would read on paper like the lyric sheet from a lost John Mayer album, but on record becomes a slice of candy-sweetened electronic pop that wouldn’t sound out of place on the most up-with-people Christian rock playlist ever compiled.

His October 13 setlist at downtown’s House of Blues is bound to be peppered with tunes that he landed on TV shows and movies that also featured him performing onscreen, including Grey’s Anatomy, The Vampire Diaries, NCIS, Cold Case, Bones, and One Tree Hill. Opening will be Australian alt-rockers Atlas Genius