With the release of the single "Play Me A Christmas Song", Stephen Dowd manages to bottle the very specific, blue-hued silence that falls over a living room once the wrapping paper has been cleared away. It is a curious thing, really, how a melody can act less like a sound wave and more like the smell of a candle that was blown out five...

Listening to Chelsea Rebecca’s new single, “Little Girl”, is like finding a devastatingly honest diary entry tucked inside a brightly-coloured travel guide for a city you’ll never visit. It begins with the expected folk-pop intimacy: Rebecca’s silky voice sketching a scene so close it feels confidential. But the intimacy is a feint. This isn’t a quaint room for quiet reflection; it's a cage with...