Some songs are like a time machine. You press play, and suddenly you’re somewhere else, some other time. Maybe it’s a smoky bar in the 1970s, a sweaty punk club in the 80s, or, in the case of “Oh Denise,” the new single from Ken Woods and The Old Blue Gang, a dusty dancehall on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, sometime in the not-too-distant past. The...

The first few bars of HZPROD’s new single, “War Within (Radio Edit),” don’t so much start a song as they do raise a curtain on a scene already in grim, perpetual motion. There’s a cinematic weight here, a feeling of vastness and confinement all at once. The beat hits with the grim finality of a heavy vault door swinging shut, trapping you inside the...