Amara-Fe has definitively shifted from the messy business of becoming into the absolute certainty of claiming with her new album, "A Queen’s Ambition". The rising solo artist, tethered to deep musical roots extending through Mission and Dallas, Texas, arrives fully formed here. There is a palpable weight to her cinematic R&B and electropop arrangements. You can almost feel her surveying her territory, setting borders,...

With their third single, "The Gods That You Pray To," Lee Feather and The Night Movers have crafted a song that doesn’t knock; it just walks into the room, sits you down, and stares into your soul. The track is built on a contradiction that absolutely works: a hypnotic, circling synth hook that feels like watching a coin spin on a bar top, endlessly...