The first few notes of Megapenny Music’s single, "Across the Miles," feel less like an introduction and more like a resumption. There’s a quiet confidence here, a melody that seems to pick up a conversation left hanging four decades ago—a detail about the artist’s hiatus that you can’t help but feel in the song’s DNA. Delphine Savatte’s voice enters not with a bang, but...

A rubber band ball, meticulously constructed and then unceremoniously dropped, that's what Outside Pedestrian's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" feels like. Not the ball itself, mind you, but the brief, elastic snap of unexpected order being momentarily... let go. We know the Bach tune. It’s a holiday staple, often served up with a side of polite reverence. But here, Anthony Fesmire’s guitar, David Lockeretz’s...