Jason Molina, an influential singer-songwriter whose relentlessly sad lyrics and clear and urgent tenor defined the two alternative bands he led, the lo-fi Songs: Ohia and the only slightly more energetic Magnolia Electric Co., died on March 16 at his home in Indianapolis. He was 39.

His death was announced by his record label, Secretly Canadian. No cause was given, but his brother, Aaron, said he had had health problems related to alcoholism.

Before bearded banjo bands like Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers rode a folk-rock revival to mainstream success, Mr. Molina was constructing spare songs about 19th-century heartbreak and the despair of blue-collar workers, about loneliness and bad weather and scarred landscapes in a fading Midwest.

“I don’t really have any, you know, far-reaching vision, and never have outside of just the songs themselves,” he said in “Recording Josephine,” a 2009 documentary about the making of a Magnolia Electric Co. album.