With the release of the single "Play Me A Christmas Song", Stephen Dowd manages to bottle the very specific, blue-hued silence that falls over a living room once the wrapping paper has been cleared away. It is a curious thing, really, how a melody can act less like a sound wave and more like the smell of a candle that was blown out five...

With DALE's new album, "Vertigo," you don’t press play so much as you unlock a door to a strangely familiar apartment, one where every room is a different state of mind. It’s a work of meticulous interior design, built from the sleek, moody synths that sound less like a tribute to the 80s and more like an artifact from a parallel version of that...