50mething, the 58-year-old British independent solo artist, confronts global horror with disarming brightness on his jarring new single, "Gaza (on and on and on)". Hailing from Ealing, Paul Jenner an ex-dancer and former garden builder operating from his DIY home studio crafts story-based music that speaks directly to structural injustice. Here, he takes the endless, agonizing cycle of war and deliberately sneaks it inside...

Listening to Shotgun Driver’s new EP, “Jester Privileges”, is like finding a glitter bomb in a padded cell. The four songs present a disorienting, strangely compelling contradiction. On the surface, the alt-pop framework pulses with an upbeat, almost defiant energy; this is the slick, rock-tinged anxiety of a Machine Gun Kelly track built for open-road brooding. But beneath it, the narrative, carried by those...