The Toronto Hood Pop artist Ekelle turns self-worth into a sleek, dance-ready reset with help from producer Audio Gibbs. Ekelle does not tiptoe out of a bad situation on "(Turn Me) Loose". She throws on confidence, checks the mirror, and makes the exit feel like a party that started without the person who failed to value her. The Toronto rapper, singer, and songwriter has built her...

Sophia Mengrosso’s new album, “Unforgiven”, doesn’t so much start as it does detonate, a thirteen-song treatise on survival. Her voice, a thing clearly trained for gilded halls and velvet curtains, instead wails from within a foundry’s clang and fire. The result is a bizarre and beautiful collision, the sonic equivalent of discovering a lost Caravaggio painting lit by a flickering fluorescent tube in a...