Listening to John Keenan’s “Wreckage of the Past” feels like being handed the audio diary of a ghost who is not yet dead. This is an 18-song excavation of a psyche at war, made all the more intense by the knowledge that Keenan is the sole architect—producer, writer, mixer, and tormented protagonist. The whole project has the hermetically sealed, slightly feverish quality of a...

Matthew Phillips, the two-time San Diego Music Award-winning independent artist, takes up arms against our modern era's disposable romance on his new single, "Battlefield of Love." We live in an age where discarding people is terrifyingly easy. Phillips rejects that entirely. Writing, playing guitar, and performing with a fierce sense of defiance, he blends alternative rock urgency with sprawling cinematic textures to build a...