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...

With “I’m Still Standing,” Frankie Muriel isn't just releasing nine songs; he’s excavating a life lived in the key of rock and roll. The glam-metal swagger of KINGOFTHEHILL and the dance-floor pulse of Dr. Zhivegas are here, but only as ghosts in the machine—ancestral echoes beneath a sound that is grittier, warmer, and stained with the wisdom of survival. This is the sound of...