The Alessandro Savino Project serves up a new single, “SORRY,” and it arrives feeling less like a song and more like a strange, beautiful confession made under the low-wattage glow of a bar sign after everyone else has gone home. The word itself is so insufficient, isn't it? A pebble of a word meant to fill a canyon. But this track isn't the pebble;...

Ava Valianti represents something increasingly rare in contemporary music: genuine precocity without artifice. This Massachusetts artist, who is only fifteen years old, handles general themes with a level of emotional depth that is shocking. She shows that youth can bring out the best in complicated human experiences, rather than hiding them. "Distant," her sixth single, functions as a sonic archaeology of friendship's dissolution. The track excavates layers...