Millie Mountain’s "Tools" arrives with its guard up and its windows open. This three-track EP puts mental overload, social violence, harmful relationship patterns and the hunt for happiness in the same small room, then allows each concern room to breathe. For a new music release working across experimental R&B, neo-soul, trap soul and Afrobeats, it is a direct and emotionally alert statement. Mountain has already shown...

Guess Pre's "Clarity." The name itself feels like a punchline missing its joke, or maybe the setup to a philosophical riddle I'm not equipped to solve. Gregory Stanton, the Wisconsin-based artist behind the moniker, has served up a nine-track album that's… well, it's trying to be a lot of things, and surprisingly, mostly succeeding. https://open.spotify.com/album/2hV27eRxEJp08kML02uRW1 This isn't background music for folding laundry. It's more like the...