Listening to the opening of Michellar’s "Truth Over Lies" is like being dropped mid-sentence into a conversation you desperately need to hear. This track, which features Frankie El, doesn't ease you in; it puts you on the "shaky ground" it sings about, a state of profound vertigo that reminds me of the low, anxious hum an old CRT television used to make just before...

With DALE's new album, "Vertigo," you don’t press play so much as you unlock a door to a strangely familiar apartment, one where every room is a different state of mind. It’s a work of meticulous interior design, built from the sleek, moody synths that sound less like a tribute to the 80s and more like an artifact from a parallel version of that...