Ava Valianti represents something increasingly rare in contemporary music: genuine precocity without artifice. This Massachusetts artist, who is only fifteen years old, handles general themes with a level of emotional depth that is shocking. She shows that youth can bring out the best in complicated human experiences, rather than hiding them. "Distant," her sixth single, functions as a sonic archaeology of friendship's dissolution. The track excavates layers...

Jon Gold’s new single, "Lullaby for a Dream," is an act of gorgeous disorientation. You see the name—a pianist rooted in the intricate soils of jazz—and you prepare for one thing, but what arrives is a mist-laden skiff drifting from an entirely different shore. Gold, a Delaware musician, has composed a piece of British-Gaelic folk, and the cognitive dissonance is half the immediate magic....