There's a curious jolt in hearing a title like "Us Against The World" from an act called The Cockney Cowboy. The name itself is a glorious contradiction, a pairing of gritty East London reality with the wide-open romance of Nashville. You half expect a joke, but what Justin Vella delivers is a dead-serious, straight-shooting country ballad that smells less of hay bales and more...

On his stirring new single "No One Sees It," ErickOscar confronts the exhausting, solitary theater of living with invisible illness. Drawing from decades of playing acoustic guitar in church worship bands and a prolific personal catalog of over a thousand songs, the Panama-born, U.S.-based songwriter and producer constructs a contemporary pop ballad tailored for anyone whose struggle fails to register on a standard medical...