Robin James Hurt’s “A Song, A Story Told” arrives with a sound you can almost run a thumb over, like worn corduroy. In an age of sterile, diamond-polished productions, this album is a defiantly handmade thing, tracked onto vintage cassette machines. The result is not a flaw, but an ingredient. A faint, persistent hiss breathes alongside the instruments, a ghost in the machine who...

Muse L'Artiste came up at a time when the R&B industry had become stale, injecting it with a new dose of genuine passion and Cameroonian soul. Muse is not just a musical powerhouse, but a symbol of female agency in the traditionally male-dominated field of music production, since they are at the forefront of the all-female label Powher Sound. Muse is a GRAMMY-member band whose music...