Listening to the opening of Michellar’s "Truth Over Lies" is like being dropped mid-sentence into a conversation you desperately need to hear. This track, which features Frankie El, doesn't ease you in; it puts you on the "shaky ground" it sings about, a state of profound vertigo that reminds me of the low, anxious hum an old CRT television used to make just before...

It’s strange to think about silence as a form of noise, isn’t it? The kind that fills a room after you've heard something so emotionally dense, anything else feels obnoxious. That’s the type of quiet that "Not Turning Back" by Baylee Dowling leaves behind. It’s not the silence of emptiness, but the kind where something just sank deep into your chest, and you need...