GISKE’s "The Sound of Birdsong" doesn’t so much begin as it seeps into the room, like the pale, perpetual twilight of a Norwegian summer night where sleep feels like a theoretical concept. This is a song for the space between the last page of a book and turning off the light; a four-minute float in that strange, conscious stillness when the world is quiet...

It’s strange to think about silence as a form of noise, isn’t it? The kind that fills a room after you've heard something so emotionally dense, anything else feels obnoxious. That’s the type of quiet that "Not Turning Back" by Baylee Dowling leaves behind. It’s not the silence of emptiness, but the kind where something just sank deep into your chest, and you need...