Julia Kate, a 20-year-old sojourner in the land of melodies (a.k.a. a songwriting student at Berklee), just dropped "fake friends," and my initial reaction was… did a sentient Instagram filter write this? Not in a bad way. More in a "wait, is this the matrix?" way. https://open.spotify.com/album/5x6CaYde9gncmDI5KpIKkQ?si=2gYl_dQ4SFm3vAVffdX5Vg The song’s theme slaps you in the face, gently. It explores how, in our curated, perpetually-online existence, actual connection...

Listening to Zov.yay’s new single, “No Watches,” is like catching yourself forgetting what day of the week it is, and then deciding you quite like it. There’s a distinct feeling of unshouldering here, a shedding of temporal anxiety. Zov.yay’s flow is less a performance and more a conversation you’ve walked into, a comfortable, self-assured account of having arrived somewhere important without having watched the...