Katie Noir drops a wildly entertaining dose of affectionate satire on her new single, "I Prefer Jason". The 21-year-old student, songwriter, and producer constructs an excessively glamorous, fictionalized celebrity wedding here. Our narrator ignores the glossy, high-profile mega-star groom completely. Her attention drifts sideways instead, locking onto the best man: the groom’s relaxed, beautifully unpretentious brother, Jason. https://open.spotify.com/track/4UT6n18SpY9I0e1xPFprVY?si=b879f9126c574414 The sheer absurdity of this misdirected crush dictates...

Jon Gold’s new single, "Lullaby for a Dream," is an act of gorgeous disorientation. You see the name—a pianist rooted in the intricate soils of jazz—and you prepare for one thing, but what arrives is a mist-laden skiff drifting from an entirely different shore. Gold, a Delaware musician, has composed a piece of British-Gaelic folk, and the cognitive dissonance is half the immediate magic....