Empty Pinata – remember LA Rodriguez? – serves up the single "Bonfire," and honestly, the air changes slightly when you play it. It’s less like passively listening and more like discovering a singed diary page fluttering down a quiet street. The music itself is this curious contradiction, wrapping harrowing emotional shrapnel in the comforting gauze of indie-pop, flecked with soft rock warmth. A strangely...

Love Ghost and The Skinner Brothers have dropped their new single, “Worth it,” and it arrives not so much with a knock as with the splintering crack of a door being kicked off its hinges. This is the sound of the emotional floor giving way. It’s a raw-nerved piece of alternative rock that scrapes at the psyche, possessing the same comforting quality as a...