The Alessandro Savino Project serves up a new single, “SORRY,” and it arrives feeling less like a song and more like a strange, beautiful confession made under the low-wattage glow of a bar sign after everyone else has gone home. The word itself is so insufficient, isn't it? A pebble of a word meant to fill a canyon. But this track isn't the pebble;...

The fastest pop songs arrive like a notification. Ben Lester’s self-titled debut does something more interesting: it lets the listener wait for the message to finish forming. Across 13 tracks for Mayfield Records, the London singer, songwriter, performer and producer turns patience into part of the pleasure. The result is indie pop with an arranger’s discipline, a record built for people who like a chorus but...