On his latest album, “Appaloosa Bones,” Colorado-based singer-songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov crafts pop-up boom towns and misty villages filled with denizens as at home in last night’s neon as they might have been in the moonlight of 150 years ago.

Initially planned as a more austere pursuit akin to 2018’s “Evening Machines,” Isakov progressed from an initial idea for a dreamy indie sound to epic folk.

“Every time, I’m like, ‘I’m going to make this kind of record,’ or I’ll hear a record that’s so inspiring, and I’ll be like, ‘Yes, I want to make a record in that vein,’ and then the songs just tell you what to do,” Isakov said with a laugh. “They’re like, ‘I don’t care what you think! Now, we’re going to make a super sleepy B-side record and you don’t have any say in it.’”

Isakov will be in Colorado Springs on Thursday to perform at Pikes Peak Center.

Recorded at Isakov’s home studio on his Starling Farm in Boulder County, “Appaloosa Bones” partly consists of songs conceived over the course of decades that simply were waiting to find a home on album.

“A lot of the songs on this record were kind of old songs, or at least the seeds of them were old,” said Isakov, who has released eight albums over a two-decade career. “I changed the oil on them and took out the high school journal vibes, but I really wanted to honor some of the songs I just play all the time for myself.”

The title track “Appaloosa Bones,” in fact, draws from Isakov’s early days as a performer.

“I was picturing just being completely at the end of yourself, like you have nothing left and something kind of carries you through it, and in the story, it’s a horse,” Isakov recalled. “We used to play this bar in Denver growing up called Appaloosa Grill, and it’s funny because that’s kind of where the band and I, that was kind of like our rent gig. We played it, I don’t know, a hundred times a year or something.

“I think that period of time was so important to us as a band to learn how to relate to each other on stage and play music with each other and give the song space the way that we can. That was in the back of my mind with (“Appaloosa Bones”). That was the choice of that particular character.”