The Swedish sextet Villa Rivercat turns hesitation, healing, and synth-lit folk rock into a single built for repeat plays. Some songs feel like the exact second before you send the text you have typed three times and deleted twice. 'Woodchopper', the new single from Villa Rivercat, lives in that nervous little gap. It is about choice, but it does not treat choice like a neat...

With “Island Lantern Festival”, Tony Frissore manages to soundtrack a specific kind of mental vacation I didn’t realize I was overdue for taking. Ostensibly an instrumental nod to the Lunar New Year and the hopefulness of renewal, this piece operates less like a celebration and more like a gentle exhalation. https://open.spotify.com/album/3n43BcxSnavYKC0wt28GNu?si=E_50eQ_lQomyHT1RsD2Jrg It starts wet with the actual crash of ocean waves before slowly drifting inland. I...