There's a curious jolt in hearing a title like "Us Against The World" from an act called The Cockney Cowboy. The name itself is a glorious contradiction, a pairing of gritty East London reality with the wide-open romance of Nashville. You half expect a joke, but what Justin Vella delivers is a dead-serious, straight-shooting country ballad that smells less of hay bales and more...

Don Rello is not trying to scroll past the hard part. On "I Don’t Watch TV III", he puts fatherhood, grief and personal strain inside a seven-track Hip-Hop/Rap release. Released through RAPREC, the explicit album runs for 24 minutes and 41 seconds. Don Rello calls this his sharpest and cleanest work. For anyone meeting Don Rello here, "I Don’t Watch TV III" is the third entry...