The moment the jaunty guitar kicks in on John Smyths’ new single, "Now I'm Wiser", you feel a familiar, comfortable warmth. It’s the sound of a good chair in a bar where the floor is sticky with spilled truths. And then the story starts, a classic yarn of a hard-living past yielding to a peaceful present. Smyths, a Dutch ex-metalhead singing country out of...

Forrest Hill’s "Flow Like a River" washes in, not as a gentle meander, but more like that quiet, insistent trickling that eventually, if you listen closely, carves new landscapes in the mind. This single, the apparent linchpin for his upcoming album "Beyond the Veil," feels like a hushed conversation you didn’t realize you were desperately eavesdropping on, perhaps with your own frayed inner self...