Robin James Hurt’s “A Song, A Story Told” arrives with a sound you can almost run a thumb over, like worn corduroy. In an age of sterile, diamond-polished productions, this album is a defiantly handmade thing, tracked onto vintage cassette machines. The result is not a flaw, but an ingredient. A faint, persistent hiss breathes alongside the instruments, a ghost in the machine who...

Let’s be clear about Social Gravy’s re-released single, “Fools”: this is not a song that uses metaphor as a shield. From its first snarling chords, this track, a furious time capsule from 2016 unearthed by Brad Kohn and Vee Bordukov, feels less like a composition and more like a brick heaved through a stained-glass window. It’s a raw-throated accusation, a two-by-four of a protest...