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,...

Freddie Perry has captured a very specific brand of Saturday afternoon existentialism in his new single "WHAT EVEN IS LIFE?" It’s a track that feels like it grew naturally in his Birmingham home studio, bypassing the polished artifice of big-label pop to find something far more grounding and relatable. The song hits with a driving, bright acoustic strumming pattern the kind of rhythm that...