Jon Gold’s new single, "Lullaby for a Dream," is an act of gorgeous disorientation. You see the name—a pianist rooted in the intricate soils of jazz—and you prepare for one thing, but what arrives is a mist-laden skiff drifting from an entirely different shore. Gold, a Delaware musician, has composed a piece of British-Gaelic folk, and the cognitive dissonance is half the immediate magic....

Listening to the new album from The Bateleurs, "A Light In The Darkness", is like finding a perfectly worn leather jacket in a forgotten wardrobe. Not one from London or Los Angeles, mind you, but one discovered in a dusty Lisbon alley, smelling faintly of sea salt and old cigarettes. It fits perfectly, but it carries the shape and the stories of someone else's...