To understand a song like “Over And Over,” you first have to understand the road it travelled to get here. This is not a track that sprang fully formed from a young artist’s ambition. It’s a gnarled, weathered thing, carrying the dust of a long and winding path. The artist, Block, is a name that echoes from the raucous, DIY-spirited New York anti-folk scene of...

Violet Love has offered up an EP titled "Destined to Fail," and it arrives less like a prediction and more like a pre-existing condition, a medical chart for a soul that’s been diagnosed with itself. The DIY recording quality doesn’t feel lo-fi for aesthetics; it feels necessary, like these songs could only have been born in a sealed-off room where the air was getting...