Because we all struggle with the same things, we take it for granted that music will be easy to understand. A new song by Dre Carlan titled "Hope" was just released recently. In it, he recounts some of the more sensitive incidents that have occurred in his life. His parents struggled with their health while raising him as an only child, and it is the subject...

Robin James Hurt’s “A Song, A Story Told” arrives with a sound you can almost run a thumb over, like worn corduroy. In an age of sterile, diamond-polished productions, this album is a defiantly handmade thing, tracked onto vintage cassette machines. The result is not a flaw, but an ingredient. A faint, persistent hiss breathes alongside the instruments, a ghost in the machine who...