Patrick Hynes’ new single, "Baby’s High Again," doesn't so much arrive as materialize, like a half-remembered scent of bourbon and regret clinging to a velvet curtain. This “Midnight Country” he’s cultivating, it’s less dusty plains, more the blue, flickering light of a motel television at 3 AM, illuminating a room where decisions have been made, then unmade, then made again. Hynes, a Scot with...

When the Malaga-based duo My State unleashed "Its Whatever", I half-expected my speakers to start smoking—or at least demand an apology for the sudden surge in voltage. It is rare to hear a track that captures the precise auditory frequency of snapping a pencil in half out of sheer frustration, but here we are. This isn't polite radio fodder. It is high-octane pop-rock that forgot...