I spent a solid hour this morning watching dust motes suspended in a single shaft of sunlight, my entire nervous system held absolutely captive by Magdi Aboul-Kheir and his devastatingly immersive new album, "Slow Heat". The Germany-based journalist and classically trained pianist usually writes across a massive spectrum of genres, pivoting wildly from trance to late romanticism. Today, he has dropped an ambient, contemporary...

With his new single "Grandmas Kitchen", Kainine doesn’t so much drop a track as he does release a scent. You hear it immediately—not a sound, but the olfactory ghost of chicken foot soup steaming up a windowpane, a warmth that seeps through the cracks of a brutally cold narrative. The East London artist has built a world here where the ambient comfort of a...