Flavor Wave’s single, “The Optimist,” arrived less like a declaration and more like someone tentatively drawing back a dusty curtain on a grey afternoon. From West Chester, PA, these five lifelong friends – Kyle Loedel (vocals, lyrics), Matthew Stretch (lead guitar), Patrick Blair (rhythm guitar), Noah Montgomery (bass), and Joshua Speaker (performer/drums) – typically tread alternative rock paths nodding to influences like The Strokes....

Dalma’s new single, “Dance of Life,” arrived in my mental airspace much like discovering a pressed flower between the pages of a dense philosophical treatise – an unexpected, organic whisper of the profound. This is a tune that ponders the relentless spooling of time, that very human yearning to either clutch moments tight until our knuckles are white, or perhaps, to gently nudge the...