Named for a in County Sligo which features in William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Man and the Echo,” The Alt is the sort of band about which it is all too tempting to start throwing about popular clichés such as “supergroup.”

This stunning new trio, currently touring the United States with their self-titled album, combines the talents of three Irish traditional musicians who are all at the top of their game: John Doyle, formerly of Solas, on guitar, mandola, Irish bouzouki, and vocals; Nuala Kennedy, a noted solo artist and a member of the group Orialla, on flute, whistles, and vocals; and Eamon O’Leary, of the New York duo The Murphy Beds, on bouzouki, guitar, and vocals.

When the Shamrock Traditional Irish Music Society recently hosted The Alt at Newtown Meeting House, it was a Monday night, which is not usually the best time to schedule a concert. But in tribute to the reputation which the members of The Alt have won over the course of their careers, not to mention the rave reviews which their album has received ever since its release this summer, the meeting house was close to full.

The September 15 show started out with “Lovely Nancy,” which is also the first cut on the trio’s eponymous album. Taken from Sam Henry’s classic Songs of the People, a major collection of English-language songs from the North of Ireland, The Alt’s arrangement presents the first verse in a capella three-part harmony, with a two-guitar accompaniment starting on the second verse and instrumental interludes played on low whistle by Ms Kennedy.

The second song of the evening was also taken from the album. “What Put the Blood” is a version of the song called “Young Edward” in Francis James Child’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The lyrics were collected by John Reilly, an itinerant singer from Boyle in County Roscommon, Ireland, and the melody is derived from the English singing tradition. Mr Doyle and Mr O’Leary both played bouzoukis on this lovely and oddly cheerful tale of a man who kills his brother and goes into exile across the sea.

The vast majority of Irish traditional bands are dominated by instrumentalists and focus on dance tunes, with a few songs sung between sets of tunes for variety’s sake. The Alt, although all three members are highly skilled instrumental musicians, is focused on songs. It seems only natural, therefore, that a few sets of tunes would be played for variety between the songs.

Ms Kennedy played flute on an unusual Sligo version of the common jig “The Geese in the Bog,” which was paired with Diarmaid Moynihan’s “Covering Ground” and accompanied by Mr Doyle and Mr O’Leary on twin bouzoukis.

A funny story about recording the album in a backwoods North Carolina cabin where the musicians were visited by “one rodent after another” set up the introduction for “The Eighteenth of June,” a song about Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. The lyrics were collected in Sussex, England, but take a surprisingly sympathetic view of the defeated Emperor. Mr Doyle played mandola, with Mr O’Leary on bouzouki and Ms Kennedy supplying instrumental breaks on flute.

Ms Kennedy, being fluent in both Irish and Scots Gaelic, has taken an interest the connections between songs in the two related languages. “Mo Bhuachaill Dúdhonn” (“My Dark Brown-haired Boy”) is her Irish translation of the Scottish “Mo Ghille Dubh-Dhonn,” a woman’s complaint of how the young man she loves has crossed the sea to Ireland and married a woman in Newry. Mr Doyle’s guitar and Mr O’Leary’s bouzouki gave a complex and interesting accompaniment to Ms Kennedy’s voice and low whistle.

Many traditional songs offer cautionary tales, and “Willie Angler” is a classic example about a young woman who finds out too late that her lover is an apprentice weaver who at the moment cannot marry her and help raise their child. The Alt’s version combines verses from “Songs of the People” with others taken from the Scottish band Silly Wizard. Mr O’Leary took the leading vocal role, playing guitar with Mr Doyle on mandola and Ms Kennedy on flute.

“The Lancashire Fusilier” is not the typical song about a man going off to war and leaving his girlfriend behind. Written by W.H. Bellamy and S. Nelson and published as a broadside (printed song lyrics sold in the streets of market towns by singers, much as a contemporary subway station busker might sell CDs) between 1840 and 1860, this song has him telling her that he might have stayed if she’d been kinder to him. The Alt sang it with twin bouzouki accompaniment and paired it with “The Chandelier,” a tune by the Chicago fiddler Liz Carroll, played by Ms Kennedy on flute.

The concert ended with “Willie Taylor,” a ballad telling of a young woman who disguises herself as a sailor and goes to war to rescue her conscripted fiancé, but ends up killing him when she discovers that he has actually married a wealthy merchant’s daughter, which so impresses her superiors in the Royal Navy that they give her command of her own ship!

But such a beautiful concert couldn’t end without an encore, and The Alt chose to sing “Path of Stones,” a fine song written by Mr Doyle and inspired by the poetry of Yeats, who loved the area of Sligo where Mr Doyle’s family lives.