Some songs are like a time machine. You press play, and suddenly you’re somewhere else, some other time. Maybe it’s a smoky bar in the 1970s, a sweaty punk club in the 80s, or, in the case of “Oh Denise,” the new single from Ken Woods and The Old Blue Gang, a dusty dancehall on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, sometime in the not-too-distant past. The...

Forrest Hill’s "Flow Like a River" washes in, not as a gentle meander, but more like that quiet, insistent trickling that eventually, if you listen closely, carves new landscapes in the mind. This single, the apparent linchpin for his upcoming album "Beyond the Veil," feels like a hushed conversation you didn’t realize you were desperately eavesdropping on, perhaps with your own frayed inner self...