Prairie Wind is a Neil Young album released in 2005. After recent dalliances with 60s soul music (Are You Passionate?) and rock opera (Greendale, which spawned a Young directed film of the same name), Prairie Wind featured an acoustic based sound reminiscent of his earlier commercially successful albums Harvest and Harvest Moon.

Young recorded the album in Nashville before undergoing minimally invasive surgery for an aneurysm in the spring of 2005, and some of the songs on the album appear to be informed by Young confronting his own mortality.

A premier live performance of Prairie Wind was held in 18-19 August 2005 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Here, Neil held a two-night concert where songs from the album were performed. These concerts became the subject of a film directed by Jonathan Demme entitled "Heart of Gold".

Young debuted the album's closing track, "When God Made Me", at Live 8 in Toronto, Canada.

This album was chosen as one of Amazon.com's Top 100 Editor's Picks of 2005.