TC TENET’s new single, “Animals,” arrives with the sort of confident thud you’d expect from a well-aimed Doc Marten hitting a hollow stage. This isn't background music for tidying your sock drawer, unless your sock drawer is a portal to a field at 3 AM where everyone’s forgotten their own name but remembers every chord. It’s a full-throated roar into the now, a soundtrack...

Dylan Forshner's new EP, “Hopeless Optimism,” presents itself not so much as a collection of songs but as a series of candid diary entries set to intricately picked acoustic strings. This five-song journey from the Welland, Canada artist begins in a place of palpable internal wrestling, where the lyrics – and Forshner’s delivery – map out the grim territories of being overwhelmed, using substances...