Caroline Jones, “Homesite.”

Pop-country singer-songwriter Caroline Jones has had a busy couple of years since joining Zac Brown Band and touring all over the place, but an even bigger life development is her soon-to-be-growing family. So it makes sense that themes of personal and professional growth are stamped all over her third album, Homesite.

The generally upbeat album features a handful of guests like her fellow Zac Brown Band musicians and Vince Gill while criss-crossing adjacent genres like bluegrass, Americana and more traditional pop. Jones, a protege of Jimmy Buffett, sings about setting a strong foundation for her and her husband, preparing for motherhood, but pointing out that her music career is still important, and she has no plans to give it up.

“Not giving up is my superpower/ And I won’t quit tonight,” Jones sings on surprisingly restrained mid-tempo blues and soul hybrid “Superpower,” which comes right in the middle of the album, showing she’s got that capability as well. The song is much more understated than pop tunes like “Keep It Safe” (featuring Nashville singer-songwriter Alyssa Bonagura). The two sweetly harmonize while the major key melody recalls Taylor Swift’s late country era.

The album gets off with a bang on album opener “Lawless,” which leans heavily to pure pop, carried along by the springy four-on-the-floor percussion and nostalgic reverb-laden guitar flourishes. It’s very much a love song, comparing the throes of passion to a loss of control. “It’s a high-speed chase on the edge/ All or nothing/ Find yourself in the wild, wild West,” she sings in the outro.

The following tune, “Serendipity,” starts with some twang before quickly trading it for a poppy romp about finding unplanned outcomes—good ones—in life’s choices. The video that she’s paired with it is a faux-romcom, adding both to its quirky premise and the album’s family and career coexisting theme.

Caroline Jones also brings it on the twangier pop tunes like “Britches” and “Million Little Bandaids,” with Zac Brown Band. The song is too sleek and glossy for honky-tonks, but the banjo accents, duetting vocals and uplifting lyrics about learning to live with and accept pain rather than trying to bury it make it a welcome addition to country music today. Remember that historically, exposing your weak side wasn’t as common as covering it up.

“Let it hurt, let it bleed/ Let it be the fuel you need/ To tell the truth, I know it’s hard/ But it’s harder to cover up your heart/ With one million little bandaids,” Jones and Brown sing. “Britches” trades the acoustic guitars for electrics but adds a fiddle to the mix; this one’s honky-tonk-ready. Jones sings about the male-and-female dynamic, calling on the same spirits as Shania Twain did on “That Don’t Impress Me Much.”

Looking for more old-school country? Look to ballads like title track “Homesite,” a figurative tentpole that carries Jones’ mission statement about starting a family from a sturdy foundation.

“I will gladly give you the rest of my life/ And every dream I build, I’ll build by your side,” she sings about her husband, Nick, using the imagery of walking through wilderness before finding the place where she wants to build her home base, frontier-like. “And now we’re planting trees that our grandkids will climb/ and it turns out that blueprint was for you the whole time.”

Then there’s pedal-steel-laden “Talking to Milo,” addressed to her husband, about the tragedy he faced when his brother died seven years earlier. She recounts the conversation the two had before deciding to try starting a family, and compares her impending motherhood to that of her husband’s mom, who lost a child—wondering whether she could have survived such a loss.

Previously released album closer “By Way of Sorrow” is Homesite‘s one cover, by ’90s folk supergroup Cry Cry Cry. This version features a spacey intro and backing vocals by Vince Gill. It’s less country and more folk—think Richard Thompson’s folk rock group Fairport Convention, but with pedal steel.

Not wanting to add too much heaviness to the back half of the album, Caroline Jones smartly added a couple of the fun songs here as well in “Normal Person” (which she claims she isn’t, and her husband should have figured that out) and “Being A Woman (Is Like Being The Sun).”

The latter is straight-up bluegrass with plucked banjo bouncing around strummed guitars, calming fiddle runs and what sounds like a stand-up bass. This empowering tune points out that women make the world go ’round with their supernatural powers—but with great powers come great responsibility and, “It ain’t fair/ Every woman in the world knows it ain’t fair/ But still we care/ It’s how we’re built like rivers run and trees make air/ We make love.”

Follow Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.