Robin James Hurt’s “A Song, A Story Told” arrives with a sound you can almost run a thumb over, like worn corduroy. In an age of sterile, diamond-polished productions, this album is a defiantly handmade thing, tracked onto vintage cassette machines. The result is not a flaw, but an ingredient. A faint, persistent hiss breathes alongside the instruments, a ghost in the machine who...

Mariah Jayne, "Crescent". This single... it's a chipped teacup holding a storm. Not a tempest in a teapot, mind you, something far more contained, yet infinitely more volatile. "Crescent," the new single from rising indie-pop artist Mariah Jayne, isn't something you just listen to. You inhabit it. https://open.spotify.com/track/2mLMCz0d31Q0emQqOMBUOY?si=d70ef1311a1b4019 The genre label says indie-pop. Fine. Accurate, I suppose, if you're cataloging butterflies by pinning them to a...