Flavor Wave’s single, “The Optimist,” arrived less like a declaration and more like someone tentatively drawing back a dusty curtain on a grey afternoon. From West Chester, PA, these five lifelong friends – Kyle Loedel (vocals, lyrics), Matthew Stretch (lead guitar), Patrick Blair (rhythm guitar), Noah Montgomery (bass), and Joshua Speaker (performer/drums) – typically tread alternative rock paths nodding to influences like The Strokes....

The Alessandro Savino Project serves up a new single, “SORRY,” and it arrives feeling less like a song and more like a strange, beautiful confession made under the low-wattage glow of a bar sign after everyone else has gone home. The word itself is so insufficient, isn't it? A pebble of a word meant to fill a canyon. But this track isn't the pebble;...