Mike Stewart Theory’s new single, “It Reaches Us,” feels less like a piece of music and more like a strange meteorological event happening inside your head. You’re immediately dropped into a groove that has the smooth, shoulder-rolling confidence of 80s soul, but something is off in the atmosphere. The air is thick with a psychedelic haze, a sense of temporal displacement that is both...

Seishin Takeno's "Echoes," a sonic postcard from Kanagawa. Nine instrumental pieces, I've been told. Not nine songs, mind you – more like nine shaded windows into a particular kind of quiet. This isn't music that yells; it leans in, like a friend confiding a secret you half-hear on a summer porch. Immediately, you're not so much listening as remembering. Or maybe anticipating. It feels...