Ava Valianti represents something increasingly rare in contemporary music: genuine precocity without artifice. This Massachusetts artist, who is only fifteen years old, handles general themes with a level of emotional depth that is shocking. She shows that youth can bring out the best in complicated human experiences, rather than hiding them. "Distant," her sixth single, functions as a sonic archaeology of friendship's dissolution. The track excavates layers...

Forrest Hill’s "Flow Like a River" washes in, not as a gentle meander, but more like that quiet, insistent trickling that eventually, if you listen closely, carves new landscapes in the mind. This single, the apparent linchpin for his upcoming album "Beyond the Veil," feels like a hushed conversation you didn’t realize you were desperately eavesdropping on, perhaps with your own frayed inner self...