Maraad’s new album, “BUFF”, is a strange and beautiful paradox, an object forged in the very fire it’s meant to protect you from. Each track is presented as a "buff," a bit of protective magic for the spirit, but the energy humming underneath feels less like a polished shield and more like the faint, determined glow around a figure in a centuries-old altarpiece—somehow both...

Clare Easdown’s new single, "Lipstick On My Restraints," doesn't arrive so much as it materializes, spitting glitter and venom in the face of polite society. This is the sound of a patient hijacking the asylum’s PA system, a furious and fiercely glamorous reclamation of a narrative. It’s a track that feels less written and more clawed into existence, forged in the friction between imposed...