Jon Gold’s new single, "Lullaby for a Dream," is an act of gorgeous disorientation. You see the name—a pianist rooted in the intricate soils of jazz—and you prepare for one thing, but what arrives is a mist-laden skiff drifting from an entirely different shore. Gold, a Delaware musician, has composed a piece of British-Gaelic folk, and the cognitive dissonance is half the immediate magic....

An empty bedroom can feel louder than a packed bar, and Joe Caruso builds “Waiting on the Wind” around that exact jolt. The Washington, DC singer-songwriter’s 2026 Folk/Pop single takes the familiar college send-off and gives it a close, human centre: a father looking at the room his only child has left behind, waiting for the next break to bring him home. It is a sharp...