There is a specific kind of quiet you find in the Midwest, and listening to Derby Hill and his self-titled release, "Derby Hill", feels like stumbling into that quiet after a long, noisy shift. It’s not the silence of emptiness; it’s the silence of after. After the argument, after the paycheck clears, after the sun goes down over the Detroit skyline or a Chicago...

There are rooms where a piano note can make ordinary light feel newly fragile. In "Catch Feelings", Adla seems to enter that kind of room with patience, letting emotion gather slowly rather than announcing itself too soon. The Sarajevo-born, Malta-based singer-songwriter and pianist frames her new single as the moment affection stops behaving casually and asks for a name. It is an intimate idea, but also...