Earl Patrick pivots sharply away from his usual indie-folk and guitar-driven comfort zones for his newest release, the wildly inventive album "Conditioned By Machines". The Portland, Oregon-based composer, singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist has spent over two decades building a dense, eight-album catalog. Here, however, he entirely flips the script. Feeling that classical flute music too often prioritizes gesture over pure melody, he set out...

Amy-Lin Slezak’s “Known 3 Yrs. Seen 24 Hrs” opens with the bright, optimistic twang of country pop, a sound so sun-drenched you can almost feel the heat coming off the asphalt. The fiddle weaves itself through clean acoustic strums and soaring electric guitars, a musical language we all know. But the story it tells is something wonderfully specific, a peculiar ache you didn't know...