Remy Smith’s "Short Ride Down" arrived not with a crash, but with the insistent hum of fluorescent lights in a waiting room you can’t quite leave. This slice of indie rock, edged with the introspection of folk, doesn't just sing about the Los Angeles hustle; it smells faintly of studio air conditioning and the specific anxiety of knowing your smile is part of the...

Patrick Hynes’ new single, "Baby’s High Again," doesn't so much arrive as materialize, like a half-remembered scent of bourbon and regret clinging to a velvet curtain. This “Midnight Country” he’s cultivating, it’s less dusty plains, more the blue, flickering light of a motel television at 3 AM, illuminating a room where decisions have been made, then unmade, then made again. Hynes, a Scot with...