Rubanq’s “Worldwide Dead” slides into your listening not with a bang, but with the gritty inevitability of a slowly tightening knot. Joel Patric, the Gothenburg mind behind this introspective project, isn’t serving up easy comforts. Instead, he’s crafting a heavy-hearted chronicle of our digital descent, a sort of sonic warning flare fired from a shoreline most of us are too screen-addled to even see. https://open.spotify.com/track/7EW97ayWhXaAWreULBkoOB?si=43235d208a2a4ea3 The...

Aleutians’ new single, "Osiris," arrives sounding for all the world like a breezy afternoon on the coast, jangly and familiar. The New Brighton project creates the sort of wistful guitar pop that should be soundtracking a montage of fondly-remembered mistakes. But then you catch the words, and the cheerful tide turns into something much colder, pulling you out from a safe shore. https://open.spotify.com/track/627Ecj7hDLFbdo6keMsoiy?si=e23e5a17cef24947 The whole affair...