Okay, let's pretend the universe coughed up "All the Christmas Lights." Not literally, of course, though I did find a sparkly rock in my pocket this morning – probably unrelated. This single by Eric Harmsen, straight outta Alpine, manages to feel both like a familiar, cozy sweater and a strangely uncharted territory. https://open.spotify.com/album/422cieMEcXDGkGRXvKa058 The music… it’s less jingle bell rock and more like a snow globe...

She Becomes’ new single, “Necromancer”, has left me thinking less about music and more about the strange inscriptions one finds on very old gravestones. It’s a track that hangs in the air like November fog, built on guitars that feel like they’ve been dragged through damp, loamy soil and a bassline that has the coiled-up energy of a minor character in a Brontë novel,...