Robin James Hurt’s “A Song, A Story Told” arrives with a sound you can almost run a thumb over, like worn corduroy. In an age of sterile, diamond-polished productions, this album is a defiantly handmade thing, tracked onto vintage cassette machines. The result is not a flaw, but an ingredient. A faint, persistent hiss breathes alongside the instruments, a ghost in the machine who...

Jamie Somerville’s new single, “Lonely Walkers,” drifts in like morning fog rolling over a deserted pier. It’s a track born from a home setting, and you feel that intimacy immediately – a close-mic'd vulnerability mapping the difficult terrain of profound solitude. Somerville, a London solo artist, clearly understands the peculiar weight of wanting connection while simultaneously building fortifications against the possibility of it. https://open.spotify.com/track/0pqbuFAcyMYC3JEZvomxxY?si=eb849e7f5ccb4d4a Drawing from...