Adam Brice's "Never Is Too Late" landed on my desk – or, rather, materialized in my digital ether – and I've been wrestling with its echoes ever since. It's a curious beast, this album. Part rock anthem, part campfire confessional, with a splash of country twang that somehow doesn't feel out of place, which has themes running circles like wild horses, settling down around...

Austin-based artist Hoxsey arrives with "Harvest Moon Sessions", an ambitious, unpredictable collection that catches the exact chill of early autumn when the sun sinks early and the wind carries an unsettling bite. It sidesteps seasonal kitsch entirely. Instead of manufactured haunted-house theatrics, the record confronts mortality, folklore, and the strange detritus of human memory by wandering through genres like an explorer traversing an overgrown...