Jon Gold’s new single, "Lullaby for a Dream," is an act of gorgeous disorientation. You see the name—a pianist rooted in the intricate soils of jazz—and you prepare for one thing, but what arrives is a mist-laden skiff drifting from an entirely different shore. Gold, a Delaware musician, has composed a piece of British-Gaelic folk, and the cognitive dissonance is half the immediate magic....

Motihari Brigade have dropped a massive, heavily distorted wrench into our algorithmically curated lives with their biting new single, "The Great Refusal." Preceding their upcoming full-length album, "Problematic," the track delivers exactly the brand of defiant "Rock-n-Roll Thoughtcrime" the band uses to shake independent minds awake. Deriving their name from George Orwell’s Indian birthplace, the group zeroes in on a very specific modern sickness:...