With DALE's new album, "Vertigo," you don’t press play so much as you unlock a door to a strangely familiar apartment, one where every room is a different state of mind. It’s a work of meticulous interior design, built from the sleek, moody synths that sound less like a tribute to the 80s and more like an artifact from a parallel version of that...

The Austin-based songwriter Alex Winters turns the terrifying act of emotional surrender into a towering alt-rock confession. There is a specific kind of silence that occupies a room right before a heavy truth is spoken aloud. It is thick, suffocating, and entirely self-imposed. We build fortresses out of our past traumas, stacking bricks of deflection and mortar of avoidance to guarantee nothing can ever hurt us...