Southern Louisiana Creole visionary Zióna Maré-Laveaux introduces her new single, "FOLD ME LIKE SUNDAY", and honestly, my immediate physical reaction was a sudden urge to lay flat on the floor and cancel all appointments. She calls this entirely original sonic territory ZIONYX™. It is a staggering, humid fusion of Afrobeat, Global Black Sound, and Bayou Soul that flawlessly bridges her ancestral heritage with a...

Robin James Hurt’s “A Song, A Story Told” arrives with a sound you can almost run a thumb over, like worn corduroy. In an age of sterile, diamond-polished productions, this album is a defiantly handmade thing, tracked onto vintage cassette machines. The result is not a flaw, but an ingredient. A faint, persistent hiss breathes alongside the instruments, a ghost in the machine who...