Some songs are like a time machine. You press play, and suddenly you’re somewhere else, some other time. Maybe it’s a smoky bar in the 1970s, a sweaty punk club in the 80s, or, in the case of “Oh Denise,” the new single from Ken Woods and The Old Blue Gang, a dusty dancehall on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, sometime in the not-too-distant past. The...

Listening to Jacre and Lucie Glang's collaborative single, “Holy,” is an act of calibration. The song doesn’t shout; it quietly rearranges the furniture in the room, asking you to find a new, more comfortable place to sit. In a world practically vibrating with manufactured urgency and digital anguish, this track proposes a radical alternative: turning away. It’s a slow, deliberate retreat into a sanctuary...