Listening to John Keenan’s “Wreckage of the Past” feels like being handed the audio diary of a ghost who is not yet dead. This is an 18-song excavation of a psyche at war, made all the more intense by the knowledge that Keenan is the sole architect—producer, writer, mixer, and tormented protagonist. The whole project has the hermetically sealed, slightly feverish quality of a...

The most arresting thing about Laura M.’s “Fly Away” arrives before any attempt to overstate it: the single is the 15-year-old singer-songwriter’s first song written completely on her own. It takes the tender, melancholy pull of first love and gives it the perspective of someone meeting those feelings in real time. “Fly Away” makes room for a young writer’s first independent statement. Laura was born in...