There is a peculiar alchemy happening with Jimmy Eff and the Sundogs on their new single, "Better Like Before". It sits in the air like the smell of ozone right after a lightning strike charged, crisp, and signifying a sudden shift in the atmosphere. You listen to it, and you sort of expect the industrial gray of their Birmingham home base, yet the sound...

Listening to Libby Ember’s single “Alibi” is a study in strange emotional temperatures. The sound is a down-tempo, sun-dusted blanket of soft guitars and gentle synth pads, the kind of arrangement you’d put on to feel safe. But the feeling it leaves behind is a deep, architectural cold, the kind you find in the shadowed corners of an old stone church long after the...