Opening to the strain of chunky, menacing guitars, the title track of Gretchen Peters’ Blackbirds is one of the most affecting murder ballads since Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” left a trail of corpses strewn across the American landscape in the early Eighties. The two victims in “Blackbirds” aren’t the first she’s written into one of her tunes, and it’s not really clear what they’ve done to deserve their sad fate at the narrator’s hands, but the results are par for the course when it comes to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member. Peters is perhaps best known for the chilling – and ambiguous – “Independence Day,” which earned her a CMA Song of the Year trophy and has become a signature song for Martina McBride.