On his expansive new single “Pieces,” Vancouver Island songwriter WiL confronts the quiet clutter of a fractured life and turns the debris into gold. Anchored by his deep, velvety vocals and fiercely idiosyncratic guitar work, the track begins in a state of brooding contemplation, moving with the cautious gravity of someone testing thin ice after a hard winter. https://open.spotify.com/track/1Ad1WMvlke4vTKEkSO8AfE?si=4fd67168e9a94a63 What begins as an insular alt-folk meditation...

Adam Brice's "Never Is Too Late" landed on my desk – or, rather, materialized in my digital ether – and I've been wrestling with its echoes ever since. It's a curious beast, this album. Part rock anthem, part campfire confessional, with a splash of country twang that somehow doesn't feel out of place, which has themes running circles like wild horses, settling down around...