Now more than ever, America needs the Watson Twins.

The sisters from Louisville, Ky., were the secret, double-barreled weapon on singer Jenny Lewis’s 2006 album “Rabbit Fur Coat,” on which they helped the former child star break out as a countrified solo artist after years of indie-rock success with the Los Angeles quartet Rilo Kiley. And they did so often subliminally, like the fine details in the fancy embroidery on a Western-style shirt. The more deeply one listens to that record, the more one hears the Watsons, whose gospel-inspired harmonies gave Ms. Lewis’s confessions both unanticipated emotional depth and a celestial glow.

As might be expected, “Fire Songs” (Vanguard), the Watsons’ full-length debut, is more than a little bit country. When you’re talking about vocalizing siblings from bluegrass territory, all you need is a banjo or a pedal steel, a slower beat, and some studio echo to make it all sound like it’s about Jesus. That spooky devotional quality, unearthly enough to qualify for the next David Lynch film, is a major part of the vibe the Watsons brought to “Rabbit Fur Coat” — a calling card. It’s everything that country and western devotees in the rock business — Jack White, Jeff Tweedy, Billy Bragg, et al. — aspire to, with their ancient tube amplifiers and Hank Williams envy. But the Watsons have it in their blood.

What’s more authentically redemptive about Chandra and Leigh Watson, however, is not that they are the reincarnation of some Carter Family-era hillbilly hoodoo. The overall effect of “Fire Songs” is closer to the current Los Angeles neo-hippie folk-pop demimonde. The gals have lived for nearly a decade in hipster Silver Lake, sort of the 21st-century Laurel Canyon, and reside on the earthier side of a scene fostered by venues such as Spaceland and culture ‘zines such as Arthur. They aren’t freak-folk, and they aren’t psychedelic. But when the guitar twangs and shimmers over a stately rhythm at the beginning of “Sky Open Up,” for instance, evoking Neil Young and Fairport Convention, it could be 1972 all over again.

Smoky, mid-tempo balladry is a favored mode for the twins, who indulge in the high lonesomes on such tracks as “Dig a Little Deeper” and “Old Ways,” bittersweet and tangy romantic reveries that work well enough without making anyone forget about Lucinda Williams. But the album is a lot more fun when the singers embrace retro confections like “How Am I To Be,” a throwback to early-1960s girl-group pop with toy xylophone chimes and “wooo-ooh-ooh” choruses that works its charms in a succinct three minutes. “Fall,” probably the best-realized performance on the album, dispenses with all but some acoustic guitars, eventual strings, and a haunted, echoing bit of piano for a coda, as one of the Watsons (it can be difficult discerning which) sings against a spare backdrop. It’s all about romantic madness and dissolution, but the delivery is so straightforward, the song becomes a meditative balm.

The sisters up the ante into goose-bump territory with the album’s not-unexpected cover song. What is unexpected is that it’s not a Wednesday night prayer-meeting ditty. Instead, the twins take up the 1987 Cure hit “Just Like Heaven,” slowed down a notch so the melody glimmers off the guitar strings like little droplets of rain, a harmonica wheezing with just the right amount of “sad.” The beauty of this kind of remake, with the verses rendered in close-miked harmony, is that the listener not only gets to hear the lyrics — stripped, as they are, away from their original new-wave trappings — but also to feel them. When the Watsons hit the line, “Found myself alone, alone, alone above a raging sea / Stole the only girl I loved and drowned her deep inside of me,” their voices delicate and dreamy in their evocation of loss, it approaches the suspended animation of a Wong Kar-Wai scene.

If you’re a sucker for this kind of stuff, or if you’ve given up on the second coming of Mazzy Star and merely need something that approximates a certain lazy soulfulness, “Fire Songs” is the right choice. The title is a misnomer, though. “Blissed Out” would be more appropriate. Praise the Lord and pass the gravy.