Listening to Nom De Plume’s new album, Circle the Dream, is like finding an old, intricate map for a place that doesn't exist on any globe. This is a record for the motionless traveler, the soul pacing the perimeter of its own skull. Aris Karabelas and Michael Magee have crafted a landscape not of highways and canyons, but of the vast, contradictory terrain behind...

There is a peculiar kind of engine at the heart of "Half Evil" by Tomato Soup, and it runs not on gasoline but on disorientation. The Denver six-piece calls their sound "Motor-Folk," and it fits. The track has the chugging, forward-moving momentum of a vehicle, yet it seems to be driving through a landscape seen in a fever dream, where the signposts are all...