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...

Seema Farswani’s single, ‘Got My Mojo Working’ featuring Dem-C, has been looping in my head, and it feels less like a track and more like a beautifully vexing predicament set to a very groovy beat. The premise is so disarmingly human, isn't it? This notion of possessing a potent personal magnetism, a kind of everyday folk magic that bends the world just so, only...