Listening to lumin's "On My Own" feels a bit like finding a thoughtfully folded note tucked into the spine of a library book you weren’t looking for. It unfolds a specific kind of disorientation, that modern ache of feeling adrift while supposedly surrounded by connection points. Lumin, a solo creator working out of Hurst, crafts this sentiment not with grand despair, but with a...

The moment the jaunty guitar kicks in on John Smyths’ new single, "Now I'm Wiser", you feel a familiar, comfortable warmth. It’s the sound of a good chair in a bar where the floor is sticky with spilled truths. And then the story starts, a classic yarn of a hard-living past yielding to a peaceful present. Smyths, a Dutch ex-metalhead singing country out of...