Listening to the opening of Michellar’s "Truth Over Lies" is like being dropped mid-sentence into a conversation you desperately need to hear. This track, which features Frankie El, doesn't ease you in; it puts you on the "shaky ground" it sings about, a state of profound vertigo that reminds me of the low, anxious hum an old CRT television used to make just before...

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...