Forrest Hill’s "Flow Like a River" washes in, not as a gentle meander, but more like that quiet, insistent trickling that eventually, if you listen closely, carves new landscapes in the mind. This single, the apparent linchpin for his upcoming album "Beyond the Veil," feels like a hushed conversation you didn’t realize you were desperately eavesdropping on, perhaps with your own frayed inner self...

Violet Love has offered up an EP titled "Destined to Fail," and it arrives less like a prediction and more like a pre-existing condition, a medical chart for a soul that’s been diagnosed with itself. The DIY recording quality doesn’t feel lo-fi for aesthetics; it feels necessary, like these songs could only have been born in a sealed-off room where the air was getting...