GISKE’s "The Sound of Birdsong" doesn’t so much begin as it seeps into the room, like the pale, perpetual twilight of a Norwegian summer night where sleep feels like a theoretical concept. This is a song for the space between the last page of a book and turning off the light; a four-minute float in that strange, conscious stillness when the world is quiet...

Mike Stewart Theory’s new single, “It Reaches Us,” feels less like a piece of music and more like a strange meteorological event happening inside your head. You’re immediately dropped into a groove that has the smooth, shoulder-rolling confidence of 80s soul, but something is off in the atmosphere. The air is thick with a psychedelic haze, a sense of temporal displacement that is both...