The moment the jaunty guitar kicks in on John Smyths’ new single, "Now I'm Wiser", you feel a familiar, comfortable warmth. It’s the sound of a good chair in a bar where the floor is sticky with spilled truths. And then the story starts, a classic yarn of a hard-living past yielding to a peaceful present. Smyths, a Dutch ex-metalhead singing country out of...

Brother Dolly tunes into a beautifully bizarre frequency on their new synth-pop single, "Transmission Number 5". Working as an enigmatic trio separated by entirely different time zones, Dan Whitehouse, Jason Tarver, and Tom Greenwood piece their music together across oceans. They fold the audio residue of everyday life—the rhythmic rush of a Tokyo subway, the hollow whir of spinning bicycle wheels—into an intensely hypnotic,...