Ultan’s single, "The Tempest," erupts not so much into the room as it does through the floorboards, dragging with it the scent of wet wool and imminent confrontation. This Dublin solo musician, a cartographer of past agonies, presents an energetic rock piece that feels less like a song about history and more like a fragment of it, throbbing and urgent. The main riff careers...

DBsock, the artistic moniker of Mingwei Gao, arrives not with a gentle announcement, but with a complex, shifting statement in her debut EP, "The Journey". The songs on this album do not really feel like easy music. Instead, they feel more like a complicated guide that shows the way through internal territories. Gao is a singer, musician, producer, and creator who works in Los Angeles and...