There's a curious jolt in hearing a title like "Us Against The World" from an act called The Cockney Cowboy. The name itself is a glorious contradiction, a pairing of gritty East London reality with the wide-open romance of Nashville. You half expect a joke, but what Justin Vella delivers is a dead-serious, straight-shooting country ballad that smells less of hay bales and more...

Listening to The Trusted’s new single, “Levitate,” is to willingly submit to a glorious, well-produced panic attack. From its opening moments, where frontman Tom Cunningham confesses to feeling like something to be discarded in the street, the track establishes a brutal vulnerability before yanking you into the dizzying orbit of another human being. It’s the sound of being so completely poleaxed by infatuation that...