Twenty years into their tenure, The Plastic Pals have returned with "Keep it Burning", a record that feels less like a studio product and more like finding a pristine, forgotten leather jacket in a thrift store scuffed, smelling faintly of clove cigarettes, and fitting perfectly. Hailing from Stockholm, this group has managed a strange bit of sonic teleportation. They are Swedish, yes, but the...

Julia Kate, a 20-year-old sojourner in the land of melodies (a.k.a. a songwriting student at Berklee), just dropped "fake friends," and my initial reaction was… did a sentient Instagram filter write this? Not in a bad way. More in a "wait, is this the matrix?" way. https://open.spotify.com/album/5x6CaYde9gncmDI5KpIKkQ?si=2gYl_dQ4SFm3vAVffdX5Vg The song’s theme slaps you in the face, gently. It explores how, in our curated, perpetually-online existence, actual connection...