With "A Piece of Me," Western Australia’s Bailey Perrie offers up a pop rock grenade with the pin already pulled, cleverly disguised as a twisted love song. It thunders forward with a cinematic, arena-ready confidence that makes its raw, emotionally brutalist core all the more disarming. The effect is something like finding a tear-stained diary page taped to the side of a massive firework...

"Cloud Ocean", is a debut record, from Hafnarfjörður in Iceland with its young artist Guzo who is changing the parameters of hip-hop and storytelling. The release of an extraordinary album at eighteen by the producer, writer, vocalist, rapper, and audio engineer Guzo perfectly reflects his maturity, inspires and brings people up to him in new forms. Drawing from such influences as Quadeca, Frank Ocean, Tyler The...