Listening to Zov.yay’s new single, “No Watches,” is like catching yourself forgetting what day of the week it is, and then deciding you quite like it. There’s a distinct feeling of unshouldering here, a shedding of temporal anxiety. Zov.yay’s flow is less a performance and more a conversation you’ve walked into, a comfortable, self-assured account of having arrived somewhere important without having watched the...

There is a specific kind of quiet you find in the Midwest, and listening to Derby Hill and his self-titled release, "Derby Hill", feels like stumbling into that quiet after a long, noisy shift. It’s not the silence of emptiness; it’s the silence of after. After the argument, after the paycheck clears, after the sun goes down over the Detroit skyline or a Chicago...