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...

Welcome to Joe Lington, a charming soul singer whose singing can turn any room into a party in an instant. Lington's journey is the stuff of stories. It started with piano classes with Lisa Gold Gervais and ended with him singing solo in a church group. Not long after Lington started to write songs about singers like Sisqo and Keith Sweat, he started to explore...