Listening to T-RAN and his new single "Don’t Stop the Fight" creates the sensation of finding a frantic heartbeat returning to a steady, confident rhythm after a near-miss on the highway. There is an immediate urgency here, a sonic landscape that refuses to sit politely in the background. https://open.spotify.com/track/7BAbhLJoHZYcwAMH6BvnhV?si=1d371859cf294456 The production fits the moniker of "gospel firestarter" perfectly, though perhaps not in the way you’d expect...

Dylan Forshner's new EP, “Hopeless Optimism,” presents itself not so much as a collection of songs but as a series of candid diary entries set to intricately picked acoustic strings. This five-song journey from the Welland, Canada artist begins in a place of palpable internal wrestling, where the lyrics – and Forshner’s delivery – map out the grim territories of being overwhelmed, using substances...