The first listen to The Sun Harmonic’s single "Glory Days" is a jarringly familiar experience, like finding a hot-rodded engine inside your grandfather's once-sturdy grandfather clock. It’s all driving, muscular rock and roll, a glorious punk-adjacent racket built by Kaleb Hikele, Dave Skrtich, and Ian McLennan to peel the paint from the walls. Yet, nestled inside that furious momentum is a narrator stuck fast,...

Listening to RIOT SON’s new single, “Loneliest at Best,” is a curious exercise in emotional time-travel. The sound pulls you back to the early 2000s, to a time of angular guitars and heartfelt, frayed-collar vocals. It has that nervous, shimmering energy of indie rock that always sounded best on a pair of wired headphones, the beat prodding you forward even as the lyrics confess...