Eddie Cohn’s new single, "Get Back My Way," starts with the kind of intimate acoustic strumming that feels like overhearing a conversation someone is having with their own reflection. It’s an immediate plunge into that uniquely modern disquiet—the sense of being adrift in a sea of your own making, armed with a compass whose needle just spins and spins. The narrator’s battle for "sanity"...

Casey McQuillen’s single “Better” arrives not with a bang, but with the quiet, decisive click of a well-made lock securing a door. It’s pop music, certainly, groomed and gleaming, yet beneath the surface bubbles a fierce kind of self-possession that’s less about demanding attention and more about curating who gets past the velvet rope of your own contentment. Coming from someone known for empowerment...