The latest from Jacob and the Starry Eyed Shadows, “Racing on the Back Straight,” performs a fantastic trick: it dresses up a full-blown existential crisis in its summer best and sends it to the beach. This Glasgow solo architect, Jacob, has constructed a Trojan horse of a track, all propulsive indie rock guitars and a pop-punk chorus so immediate it feels like you’ve known...

With his new single "Grandmas Kitchen", Kainine doesn’t so much drop a track as he does release a scent. You hear it immediately—not a sound, but the olfactory ghost of chicken foot soup steaming up a windowpane, a warmth that seeps through the cracks of a brutally cold narrative. The East London artist has built a world here where the ambient comfort of a...