Ultan’s single, "The Tempest," erupts not so much into the room as it does through the floorboards, dragging with it the scent of wet wool and imminent confrontation. This Dublin solo musician, a cartographer of past agonies, presents an energetic rock piece that feels less like a song about history and more like a fragment of it, throbbing and urgent. The main riff careers...

Adriana Spuria’s new single, “Stone,” presents itself with the polished feel of a perfect skipping-stone, but listening closely reveals it has the curious weight of a fossil in your palm. Spuria sings of a very specific, modern affliction: the slow petrification of the heart. This is a loneliness born not from solitude, but from an inability to feel for anyone else, an insulation that...