To understand a song like “Over And Over,” you first have to understand the road it travelled to get here. This is not a track that sprang fully formed from a young artist’s ambition. It’s a gnarled, weathered thing, carrying the dust of a long and winding path. The artist, Block, is a name that echoes from the raucous, DIY-spirited New York anti-folk scene of...

I spent a solid hour this morning watching dust motes suspended in a single shaft of sunlight, my entire nervous system held absolutely captive by Magdi Aboul-Kheir and his devastatingly immersive new album, "Slow Heat". The Germany-based journalist and classically trained pianist usually writes across a massive spectrum of genres, pivoting wildly from trance to late romanticism. Today, he has dropped an ambient, contemporary...