There’s a peculiar ache that settles in when listening to Maddy Low’s new single, "Dragons." It isn't a dramatic wound, but a slow, persistent pressure, the kind you feel behind your eyes after staring at a blank page for too long, convinced that whatever you create will be a monumental failure. For an artist of eighteen to articulate this specific brand of self-imposed paralysis...

Violet Love has offered up an EP titled "Destined to Fail," and it arrives less like a prediction and more like a pre-existing condition, a medical chart for a soul that’s been diagnosed with itself. The DIY recording quality doesn’t feel lo-fi for aesthetics; it feels necessary, like these songs could only have been born in a sealed-off room where the air was getting...