Some records politely ask for your attention; the "Moss E.P" from MOSS just sets a small, contained fire on your coffee table and waits for you to feel the heat. It is an immediate and strangely familiar atmosphere, like a half-remembered David Lynch dream scored with the staticky pulse of 90s trip-hop. Bee Davison's voice cuts through this hypnotic haze, not as a lament,...

There is a peculiar kind of engine at the heart of "Half Evil" by Tomato Soup, and it runs not on gasoline but on disorientation. The Denver six-piece calls their sound "Motor-Folk," and it fits. The track has the chugging, forward-moving momentum of a vehicle, yet it seems to be driving through a landscape seen in a fever dream, where the signposts are all...