Robin James Hurt’s “A Song, A Story Told” arrives with a sound you can almost run a thumb over, like worn corduroy. In an age of sterile, diamond-polished productions, this album is a defiantly handmade thing, tracked onto vintage cassette machines. The result is not a flaw, but an ingredient. A faint, persistent hiss breathes alongside the instruments, a ghost in the machine who...

Natasha, out of K.C., presents her new single, “Life’s Little Tragedies,” and it’s rather like an old, slightly melancholic tune you half-remember, then it snags you. The folk-jazz-pop tapestry, woven with soulful cello and unvarnished acoustic guitar, creates an atmosphere that’s chill, certainly, but with an undercurrent that pulls you in to listen closer. https://open.spotify.com/album/1IZqhutFIL4aVNVMTH4h7m?si=rCWdvIjKSsqWV7ok9_aBzA The song unpacks how present pain—a romantic betrayal, the rotter—can yank...