Listening to Elena C. Lockleis’s new single, “Mind - Vs. - Heart,” feels like witnessing a civil war fought entirely within a single nervous system. The sound is an intimate knot of pop architecture, the kind Julia Michaels patents in her sleep, where a confession arrives not as a ballad but as a skittish, rhythm-driven pulse. You feel the frantic heartbeat right there in...

Anacy's “Frosty” just landed, and honestly, it's like finding a lone, slightly melted candy cane in the back of the cupboard – a bit melancholic, oddly sweet, and intensely…there. This isn’t your standard jingle-bell affair. Anacy, who carves out these sonic spaces somewhere between indie-pop and, what? Festive electronica? It’s like wrapping Christmas lights around a synthesizer, I guess. They’re South African, too, which...