Listening to Arnold J.’s new single, "Muddy Waters," isn't quite like anything else swirling around right now. It arrives with the gentle insistence of incoming tide, pulling you into its specific gravity. Arnold J., Ghanaian-born and now Canada-based, weaves a sound tagged as alt-country and folk, but those labels feel thin, like trying to contain smoke. There’s earthiness, sure, but his soulful vocal lines...

Wolfgang Webb's "The Lost Boy" arrived not so much as a collection of tracks, but as a sonic correspondence from a place where streetlights hum with Kraftwerk’s ghost and the shadows dance to a trip-hop beat. This is music conceived in the wee small hours, carrying that particular clarity – or perhaps, exquisite exhaustion – of a world stripped bare by moonlight. His past...