The fastest pop songs arrive like a notification. Ben Lester’s self-titled debut does something more interesting: it lets the listener wait for the message to finish forming. Across 13 tracks for Mayfield Records, the London singer, songwriter, performer and producer turns patience into part of the pleasure. The result is indie pop with an arranger’s discipline, a record built for people who like a chorus but...

On his bracing new single “Jolie,” New York City songwriter and guitarist Owen Steib channels 1990s college-rock bite to reckon with a devastating story of lost innocence. The 18-year-old high school senior constructs a fragmented, out-of-order mystery around an exiled girl caught in the wreckage of an irreversible, violent incident. Instead of spelling out the tragedy cleanly, Steib drops cryptic, evocative breadcrumbs a denim...