Listening to Libby Ember’s single “Alibi” is a study in strange emotional temperatures. The sound is a down-tempo, sun-dusted blanket of soft guitars and gentle synth pads, the kind of arrangement you’d put on to feel safe. But the feeling it leaves behind is a deep, architectural cold, the kind you find in the shadowed corners of an old stone church long after the...

The new single from Quentin Moore, “Kiss Your Lips,” doesn’t so much start as it seeps into the room, lowering the lights and raising the temperature by a degree or two. Moore is at the piano, his vocals draping over the notes with the patient weight of heavy silk. The entire thing feels excavated from some lost '70s studio session, a slow jam built...