Sharon Jones and her band, the Dap Kings are the very embodiment of working musicians. They don’t have hit songs—their retro funk-soul may be too niche for that—but they tour like crazy, and audiences adore them. Then, in late 2013, disaster: Jones is diagnosed with cancer, and her exhausting treatment sidelines her and the band for months. Jones is down but far from out, as legendary documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple shows us in this intimate and ultimately cheer-worthy portrait of a singer for whom overcoming adversity has been a mainstay of her life and career. With so much on hold while Jones recuperates, we witness her band’s crisis of matters practical; the Dap Kings is a small business, and being out of work is tough, not to mention the strain on their health insurance. And so this becomes an exposé, too, of the lack of a social safety net for creative people. But the band is a family first—the only one Jones has—and so above all, this rousing film is a testament to the power of music and of love to keep a gal going. By MaryAnn Johanson