I spent a solid hour this morning watching dust motes suspended in a single shaft of sunlight, my entire nervous system held absolutely captive by Magdi Aboul-Kheir and his devastatingly immersive new album, "Slow Heat". The Germany-based journalist and classically trained pianist usually writes across a massive spectrum of genres, pivoting wildly from trance to late romanticism. Today, he has dropped an ambient, contemporary...

RoofTop Screamers’ "Blink of an Eye" has a way of unpacking itself in your mind long after the last note fades, like finding a single, unexplainable sequin on your collar hours after leaving a particularly vivid party. It struts in with this curious collision of sounds – a pinch of power pop’s bright-eyed yearning, the jagged, insistent pulse of new wave, a defiant shimmer...