Casey McQuillen’s single “Better” arrives not with a bang, but with the quiet, decisive click of a well-made lock securing a door. It’s pop music, certainly, groomed and gleaming, yet beneath the surface bubbles a fierce kind of self-possession that’s less about demanding attention and more about curating who gets past the velvet rope of your own contentment. Coming from someone known for empowerment...

Helladdict’s new single, “Sudden Death,” doesn’t feel like a tribute; it feels like an exhumation. Here are six men from Santiago, all seasoned enough to know that pure fury is a young person’s game, offering instead the far more corrosive anger of experience. They resurrect the chassis of 80s thrash, all bone-raw intensity and punishing tempo, but the engine is modern, built with the...