Listening to Arnold J.’s new single, "Muddy Waters," isn't quite like anything else swirling around right now. It arrives with the gentle insistence of incoming tide, pulling you into its specific gravity. Arnold J., Ghanaian-born and now Canada-based, weaves a sound tagged as alt-country and folk, but those labels feel thin, like trying to contain smoke. There’s earthiness, sure, but his soulful vocal lines...

To begin, Mahuna's new single “Far-Off Summer’s Night” does not fill the room with sound so much as it hollows out a small, reverent space within it. This is a song that arrives like a fog from the fields of Monaghan, a gentle haunting born of a Belfast past and a Berlin present, carrying with it the DNA of quiet sorcerers like Nick Drake...