"Avalon" hits like someone opening the car window at midnight and turning the volume up before anyone asks permission. Red Light Factory have built a single that moves fast and knows where its hook is hiding. This is Manchester alternative music with a pulse you can feel in the chest: electronic drums snapping forward, guitar attitude cutting through the smoke, and a chorus-ready spirit made...

Badtaste, the creative vehicle of Czech-German artist Anna Kristina, has dropped a conceptual diptych titled "Hedonism, Sobriety." Now operating out of Paris, the singer, songwriter, and dancer has constructed a release that thrives on friction. It is a project that looks directly at the messy, often contradictory nature of human desire and refuses to tidy it up for easy consumption. The music operates in the...