Eddie Cohn’s new single, "Get Back My Way," starts with the kind of intimate acoustic strumming that feels like overhearing a conversation someone is having with their own reflection. It’s an immediate plunge into that uniquely modern disquiet—the sense of being adrift in a sea of your own making, armed with a compass whose needle just spins and spins. The narrator’s battle for "sanity"...

Lessons in Crime’s new single, "Reply ASAP," bounces along with the kind of infectious energy you’d want for a summer road trip, but it’s a smokescreen for a uniquely modern state of inertia. It feels less like a rock song and more like one of those old pneumatic message tubes from a 1940s department store—all zip and kinetic energy on the outside, but inside,...