There is a peculiar kind of engine at the heart of "Half Evil" by Tomato Soup, and it runs not on gasoline but on disorientation. The Denver six-piece calls their sound "Motor-Folk," and it fits. The track has the chugging, forward-moving momentum of a vehicle, yet it seems to be driving through a landscape seen in a fever dream, where the signposts are all...

With "A Piece of Me," Western Australia’s Bailey Perrie offers up a pop rock grenade with the pin already pulled, cleverly disguised as a twisted love song. It thunders forward with a cinematic, arena-ready confidence that makes its raw, emotionally brutalist core all the more disarming. The effect is something like finding a tear-stained diary page taped to the side of a massive firework...