To listen to Stevie Hawkins’ take on "A Song For You" is to have a conversation with a ghost in a dimly lit room after the show has ended. Hawkins, long the rhythmic engine for the song's originator Leon Russell, steps from behind the drum kit to the microphone, and the space between these two roles compresses decades into four and a half minutes....

Toronto soul singer Tara Van navigates the tangled give-and-take of devotion on her buoyant new single, “I'm A Vine.” Also featured on her EP “Miles on It,” the track adopts the stubborn genius of flora the quiet tenacity of green shoots wedging through concrete merely to catch daylight. Here, Van transforms an unbalanced dynamic with an unyielding partner into an uplifting celebration of endurance,...